Shards
by Miss-Smilla
Summary: PG15. The final chapter. The final showdown. A victim, a captain without crew, a burning man, a corpse and the betrayed and betrayer they are, each of them, isolated, abandoned and alone.
1. He ruin'd me

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stems from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.  
  
Author's Notes: So here we are folks, the first chapter. Thanks go to my reviewers. I must apologise for the lateness, it's that time of year here in England when A-levels rear their ugly heads, deciding which university you get into, so there is much panicking and revision! Once again, let me know if you want to read more, or if I should give this a higher rating- I'm not sure what's what, but I'd say this is about a 12A in England.

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter One: He ruin'd me,

* * *

He burned. Literally.  
  
His lungs hurt with a deep-down insistent ache and each time he swallowed his throat rasped, tightening like steel coils.  
  
His skin dripped with sweat but he was bone dry on the inside.  
  
The dryness inside was slowly replaced with the feeling of his gut bubbling, a boiling that spread to the fat under his skin.  
  
His skin tightened, his skin split slowly, his skin began to char.  
  
He tried to open his eyes and mouth to clear the oppressive heat, but they seared.  
  
He tried to move but each motion brought an agony and dizziness.  
  
He lunged for a way out  
  
And fell out of bed.

* * *

Some looked, others didn't. No-one stopped him. Skinner; his muscles tightening to warm the deep marrow-ache from the cold, cloying air of Edinburgh, walked up the Royal Mile; a gentleman thief whose little hairs brushed sightlessly against the sleeve of his coat, feeling their way through the cold dark just as he did each time he woke up shaking with sweat, fearing he had burned away.

A dredge to move yourself through the soupy darkness, light the oil lamp and check that the fat under your skin hasn't boiled. Wash away the sweat, claw on your clothes and then a walk to the breakfast room; muscles tight with last night's fear to find you are alone. The team, taunt and secretive with the oyster's knowledge of what is inside the Nautilus. He needed to go out into the cold where there was no palpable tension and restriction except that which coated his muscles now. Half way up the hill and he was exhausted. His lungs burned.  
  
Hislungshurtwithadeepdowninsistentacheandeachtimeheswallowedhisthroatraspedt ighteninglikesteelcoils  
  
It's cold. HisSkin But he's warm. DrippedWith Skinner takes a detour, SweatBut Niddry Street HeWas, down into the cold, BoneDry slough through the dung in Cowgate, OnThe along and up to Greyfriars TheInside:  
  
A little church, a lot of tombs black with age.

He looks to the right, down the slope of the hill.

Wilhelmina Harker perched in front of the Grim Reaper.  
  
She looks directly at him, "It is so peaceful here-" She begins,  
  
"Makes a welcome change." He finishes.  
  
There is a pause where nothing happens, no birdsong, no wind, no movement. Between them the air is coloured with the smoke of burning. The cloying scent of flesh, faeces and distrust. Skinner breaks it by crunching down the incline towards her, a fast monologue delivered to the air above her head: "I'm feeling cooped up; we're all so secretive lately, and then-" He crushes bone under his foot and winces, "-there's those wiccos-"  
  
"Wiccans" she corrects.  
  
"Wiccans, who give me if not the heebie jeebies then a definite feeling of unease." He finishes and frowns at her. "You?"  
  
She smiles, looks off towards a little gate just up the hill from where they sit, where the priest is burning old debris. "A definite feeling of unease. And bad dreams?"  
  
The shift is infinitesimal. "I just- don't trust what I can't see-"  
  
She smiles broadly, a sharp grin. "Previous experience led you to this conclusion?" He frowns. A cloud of smoke making his white face oblique. "I'm sorry, please continue."  
  
"I dream of being burnt. Alive. And it's not previous experience leading me to this conclusion-"  
  
"Touché."  
  
"-It's a slow roasting. Not a blast of flame, a slow burn."  
  
"Prolonging the agony?"  
  
His face twists the greasepaint. "What do you think?"  
  
"Then it's perfectly explicable-"  
  
"Really?"  
  
"-you are not dealing-"  
  
"Oh don't patronise me-"  
  
"-with the experience-"  
  
"I'm not dealing? Well of course I'm not f-"  
  
"-of being so close to dying as well as-"  
  
"-ucking dealing with it, I'm so busy dealing with you-"  
  
"-you think you are-"  
  
"-and your secrecy and screams in the night!"  
  
"-What?"  
  
He looks nervous all of a sudden. "I hear you, every night, and if it's not you it sounds like Jekyll-"  
  
"Screaming?" Mina looks inscrutable for a moment. "I do not scream-"  
  
He looks completely exhausted, alone and cold. The smoke is drifting past them.  
  
"-But, there are dreams-"  
  
"Ever since they came on board? Their packages, bet you there's something dangerous there, we're fools to agree to help them Mina-"  
  
"Mirrors." She states, through a clear patch in the air. "All those packages contained were mirrors."  
  
He looks away and back again. "And your dreams- they're not worth worrying about?"  
  
"The dream. Singular. I am here, at night. On top of that mausoleum-" she points to a small tomb, black with age, the roof a dome with an egg on top. "-and the church is gone, so I have a clear view down the hill. And at the base, the very base is a figure, with a spindly silhouette, dancing; a terrible clown dance, a puppet's ballet- all arms and legs and crooked pirouettes.

"As part of the dance it jumps- impossibly large distances, but each growing smaller and smaller as if the effort is becoming too taxing, landing awkwardly time after time as it moves up the hill towards me. Its clothing is in tatters- a long dark coat shredded so it looks like a big black bird; and it takes a final leap landing directly below me.

"It continues to dance, hopping and panting, and although I'm afraid of this tapping, whispering thing I don't want to be left alone, I don't want to let that figure pass me, so I start to dance moving in the same way- a dance of friendship hopping and skipping and waving, but I see it begin to tense and I know it's going to jump again, so I dance harder, frantically moving until it whirls around, it's eyes bulging and spittle spraying from it's mouth.

"It's a corpse and it screams to me 'Not dancing! Trying to stay alive!' And with that it takes its final leap, fighting every inch of the way and vanishes through those gates."  
  
She looks at the gates, wide open and bright in the smoky sunlight. Skinner's face darting from the gates to the mausoleum to Mina and all around the church yard, eyes inscrutable behind his glasses.  
  
"Fighting all the way?" He asks finally.  
  
"All the way up the graveyard." She responds frowning as the fire at the gates flares briefly.  
  
On the grass behind Mina a blackbird hops, pecking at the ground for worms.  
  
"I need a drink." Skinner finally states.

* * *

Two bottles of whisky later and he was beginning to regret the "when in Rome..."  
  
Standing in the freezing cold, pissing against a wall at eleven o'clock while shattered glass crunched underfoot and Mina waited round the corner, Skinner braced himself with one hand and squinted as the world around him span. Beneath him the glass bubbled blackly and he groaned, staggering away, fastening him trousers as he lolled around the corner, back onto the street.  
  
The glass continued to simmer after he left; alive, moving blackly across the cobbles. 

TBC...


	2. And I am rebegot

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stem from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.  
  
Author's Notes: Well, the second chapter is here! Thanks to Funyun and Keyanna for their thoroughly charming reviews and pointers. If anyone wants to read the trailer for this then it's an R rating- so you may have to change your page settings. Might give you an idea of where I'm heading with this, and hopefully keep you reading in the long pauses between updates- yes it's those exams again...

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Two: And I am re-begot,

* * *

The portholes boiled.  
  
The glass, gripped by bolts, strained against the walls, sinuously blistering and writhing blackly. Behind the glass the water in the firth drifted peacefully.  
  
While the league sleeps, the windows on the Nautilus gain consciousness.

* * *

Hyde has been dealt an exceptionally good hand. Jekyll can see this from where he sits, and he can also see the chips mounting in the centre of the table.  
  
"Do you think that's wise?" He asks as Edward pushes another hundred in.  
  
"Shut up Jekyll," Hyde sneers, "You folded."  
  
The other occupant of the table, hidden in shadow, every inch the Machiavellian villain laughs quietly shuffling his cards absently. "Where were we Edward?" he asks.  
  
"End of the deal." Hyde replies, smiling at the shadow.  
  
There is a perverse expectancy in the air. Jekyll can feel it creeping along his skin.  
  
"And the angel said to the devil, I'll see your heart and raise you mine." The shadow comments, laying down a superb hand.  
  
Hyde smiles and lays down his cards. Shooting a malicious grin at Jekyll, he pulls out a small mirror and lays it on top of the pile of winnings.  
  
"You see Jekyll," He snarls, "It's not the winning or the losing; it's how you play the game."

* * *

He wakes to find himself on the floor, fully dressed, Edward's face grinning at him from the other side of the mirror.  
  
"Bad dreams, Henry?" he asks.  
  
Outside there is the sound of water and of running feet, shouts and in the distance Nemo's voice raised in anger. Jekyll aches, the stretched feeling of a transformation. He pales and shoots a sharp glance at Hyde.  
  
"What have you done, Edward?"  
  
"Nothing at all Henry. Nothing at all."  
  
With a last frightened glance at the grinning face in the mirror Jekyll runs out of the door.

* * *

It's been two weeks since they agreed to transport the Wiccans from Edinburgh to America. Two weeks of waiting for the full coven to arrive and loading their secret packages on board. Secret until the cloth slipped off one Sawyer had been carrying revealing nothing more then an ornately carved wooden frame and mirror.  
  
Two weeks of a pervading sense of unease. There was a palpable tension around the ship. Dorian's betrayal, Moriarty's games had thrown them back to a time when they were alone, no-one was to be trusted with their secrets. Skinner had taken to appearing fully clothed at every opportunity, flinching whenever someone lit a match. Sawyer kept to his room and when he ventured out for meals could not be engaged in conversation without resorting to monosyllabic answers. Mina and Nemo assumed the mantles of leadership and all the coldness and responsibility that came with it, Mina especially detached, avoiding any conversation that went beyond their standard greetings.  
  
They couldn't see each other anymore for the smoke of mistrust and fear. Jekyll knew this; he also knew that Hyde's reflection became fainter and fainter in the mirror everyday.  
  
Hyde was incredibly distant in the shards that covered the floor when he rounded the corner to find Nemo and the coven's bland spokesperson- Jacobs- arguing bitterly as around them the buckled metal groaned and water bled from the cracked porthole.  
  
It looked like an explosion; in the room behind Jacobs the mirror's frame was intact, but the glass had shattered all over the floor and out the door. Two more mirrors stood forming a triangle with the empty frame, their reflections creating two infinity curves: endless corridors of mirrors. Water leaked in the corridor, Nemo's crew already hammering out the dents in the metal and soldering closed the cracks.  
  
Jacobs was impassioned: "And I've told you, there was nothing here-"  
  
"You will contain and control-"  
  
"-to endanger you or your crew!"  
  
"-this violence produced by your rituals."  
  
Nemo waits for the response in a fighting stance- a perfectly calm, balanced stand filled with the hidden tension of his muscles.  
  
Jacobs is red in the face, indignant; a bland little man in plain-tailored outfits. "I do not care for your insults and slurs on my religion, sir. I would have thought that with a background such as yours, you might have learnt to be a little more tolerant of other cultures!"  
  
Nemo is impassive. "Not when they endanger the lives of my crew, sir" he rumbles. "I am not denying you the right to practice your beliefs- but if there are any more accidents, sir, you will be answerable to me."  
  
There is a horrible civility in his tone that Jekyll recognises, Control your evil doctor. Mina is walking from the other end of the corridor towards them. I will not have the brute free on my ship. Must I take drastic steps? Eyes roaming restlessly around the damage.  
  
She pauses to run her fingers across a soldered crack. "What has happened?" she asks all calm cold concern as she looks to Jekyll, to Jacobs, to Nemo.  
  
"An accident." He replies.

* * *

"It would appear their ritual had an unexpected effect."  
  
Sawyer frowns at this comment but makes no move. His arms are wound tightly around his ribcage, holding in any comments he might have made. Jekyll would hazard that Skinner would be bleary-eyed if his eyes could be seen; he is holding his head in such a way that it makes it very obvious he has been drinking. Mina is as pokerfaced as ever. Hyde is worryingly silent. Nemo holds the cards, but not all of the information; the briefing table has something of a tense atmosphere as a result, it is a poker game with shifting glances and a faint jitter of distrust.  
  
"But why?" Asks Jekyll, "We're not talking about anything more than a complex religion. They have belief in the magic of nature, but I highly doubt there's any real potency in that."  
  
"Enough potency, however, to deal the ship some damage." Mina muses.  
  
"Perhaps the amount of damage possible is something we ought to be considering." Murmurs Skinner and there is an edge and a worry in his voice.  
  
Sawyer shifts uncomfortably and glances towards the door.  
  
"The potency is created if the ritual is performed incorrectly." Nemo states.  
  
"When our cagey friends up there balls it up, you mean." Skinner gripes and Jekyll knows from his tone that he has been drinking. "Perhaps we should just lock them away until we get to America..."  
  
Nemo and Mina shoot him frowns of disapproval.  
  
"...It's the safest way to guarantee no more trouble."  
  
There is a complete silence. Sawyer glances towards the door once again; Skinner slumps and folds his arms tightly. Jekyll feels them disconnecting, moving as far away as they can.  
  
"So," begins Jekyll, trying to bring focus, if not harmony back to the table, "What exactly was the problem?"  
  
Focus is gone however and it was probably never here. But his powerlessness to ease the atmosphere reinforces the ineptitude that creeps up when he contemplates that all he brings to the league is Hyde- something which fades and slips out of his control every time he looks in the mirror.  
  
Nemo is now the only one who responds. "It would seem they used a door instead of a mirror- the belief being that an object retains its functions even if it is not physically performing them- and so the door opened to let this potency out, damaging the Nautilus."  
  
"So just tell them not to use a door." States Tom abruptly, standing. "If you'll excuse me..." He leaves, sentence trailing off in his wake.  
  
Jekyll tries to make eye contact with anyone, feeling suddenly cut of in the abruptness of this departure.  
  
"Yeah, g'night all." Skinner states, gathering himself slowly together, the greasepaint seeming more haggard than ever.  
  
Mina seems absorbed in her own thoughts. Nemo watches Skinner leave.  
  
"That's not all though, is it?" Mina questions, eyes fixing abruptly on Nemo. Jekyll's eyes dart between the two.  
  
"No," He replies, "Even though the door shattered, whatever it was came through it. It may still be here."  
  
Jekyll suddenly feels very cold.

* * *

Skinner burned. Literally.  
  
His lungs hurt with a deep-down insistent ache and each time he swallowed his throat rasped, tightening like steel coils.  
  
Around him he was aware of hundreds of warm bodies: people, but in the blackness he was unable to see them. They moved as a flowing mass, a pliable ragged crowd.  
  
His skin dripped with sweat but he was bone dry on the inside.  
  
Behind him was the harsh feel of stone, an acrid tug on his clothes, he could feel heat through this; an itching which expanded to a burning to a scalding to a searing. He launched himself into the centre of the crowd moving with them into a tight huddle.  
  
The dryness inside was slowly replaced with the feeling of his gut bubbling, a boiling that spread to the fat under his skin.  
  
They were moving together, slippery with sweat, hands grasping, and hair rustling. They were backing away as tightly as they could away from the walls that enclosed them- the room that had turned into a furnace; a mass of groaning, shifting humans in the dark, the acerbic smell of bile sliding over them.  
  
His skin tightened, his skin split slowly, his skin began to char.  
  
He could smell burning flesh, singed hair. Next to him a child began to cry.  
  
He tried to open his eyes and mouth to clear the oppressive heat, but they seared.  
  
A woman began to scream, children to wail. Next to him a male voice groaned and gasped and retched.  
  
He tried to move but each motion brought an agony and dizziness.  
  
The crying grew louder. Abandoned screaming and the sound of crisping skin.  
  
He lunged for a way out  
  
And woke to the sound of screaming...  
  
TBC... 


	3. Of absence, darkness, death

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stem from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours. The rather wonderful idea about mirrors comes from Helene's Harry Potter story "Beyond the Veil" an extremely good piece of work- steal only from the best...  
  
WARNING: The rating in England for this chapter would be 15. There is graphic description of injuries in this chapter. There is no equivalent rating in America (An R rating is too high). If you feel uncomfortable reading this at any point it is your responsibility to stop. I am giving you due warning. Thanks for listening.  
  
Author's Notes: At the end of chapter.

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Three: Of absence, darkness, death

* * *

He is not alone.  
  
Two feet in front of him is Allan Quatermain, and Sawyer's heart expands, contracts and aches acutely all in the space of a beat.  
  
He's standing, looking at him with the same wise, tired smile, holding the Winchester loosely in his right hand.  
  
"How are you, Tom?" He asks and his voice has a strange doubled quality in the blackness.  
  
"I'm-" he begins, but his voice breaks, halts. He is crying silently, tears of happiness and sadness mixed in together.  
  
Quatermain smiles slowly, evenly. He waits, the silence an almost physical presence until Sawyer can speak again.  
  
"I'm good, good, are you- ?"  
  
"Oh yes, fine, still dead," Allan's mouth twists into a sardonic little smile, "It would seem the legend of Allan bloody Quatermain has some weight over this side however..."  
  
He looks at Sawyer with dead eyes.  
  
"...I am paying for my sins."  
  
Sawyer's face breaks into an exclamation of distress. Quatermain sighs.  
  
"Oh there's no need to react like that- it breaks the monotony. It can become very tedious here I can assure you."  
  
"I don't understand," exclaims Sawyer, "Sins? There shouldn't-"  
  
"Oh but there should." States Quatermain, looking away from Tom into the distance, "Pride, deceit... It's a long list I didn't have time to atone for." He smiles and shoots a sidelong glance at Sawyer, "Didn't expect to go that way: saving your life."  
  
Sawyer frowns as the guilt in him expands, pressing on his heart. I let you die, and now I'm falling apart...  
  
"And look what you've done, Sawyer; turned away from the team, hidden from the world," Allan fixes him with that same dead gaze, the eyes almost black. "You run away. I don't call that honouring my memory..."  
  
Sawyer looks at him, pleading silently, this is not what he needs, and this is not what he wants...  
  
"Tom," Quatermain begins, "The guilt is perfectly understandable, it was after all your weakness that led to my death-"  
  
Sawyer recoils as if physically hit.  
  
"-but this selfishness..." Quatermain begins moving towards him slowly, and Tom feels the air growing colder. The smile is still bitter, the eyes are dead and it doesn't look like Allan anymore. He feels an inescapable fear, and a growing conviction that this is all wrong.  
  
"You're not Quatermain." He states, voice a whisper in the icy air.  
  
Allan's face suddenly breaks out into a wide smile, the teeth too white and too sharp. The skin suddenly ripples as if made of water- something beneath it disturbing the calm surface.  
  
"No," The voice says, and the strange doubled quality is now more emphasised that ever. "No, Sawyer, I'm not," It leans close to Tom, eyes black as pitch, "but you're just too delicious to resist."  
  
Sawyer backs away fast, straight into an invisible wall.  
  
"Time to wake up, Tom" the thing states.

* * *

The screaming is unbelievably loud, a piercing wail. He thinks for a moment he's back there in the dark amongst the others, all slowly charring to death. But the lights are burning brightly in his cabin and his flesh, although not visible, is still intact.  
  
He scrabbles for some clothes- trousers, coat, and shirt; anything to cover up the vulnerable skin. He runs out the door, slamming it behind him, the screaming breaking down ahead of him in low moans which he runs towards.  
  
Ahead of him Sawyer rounds a corner at a speed which is frightening and the two almost collide.  
  
"Skinner!" He exclaims, and Rodney can see in his eyes the same mixture of fear and relief; at least it isn't you that's screaming...  
  
They begin to run together, stretching their legs; the corridor seemingly expanding in front of them with a misty echo, the screaming ahead getting louder. The whole thing has a horrible dream-like quality- the ones where you run and run but cannot get away from the awful thing that's coming from behind you.  
  
Or in this case the awful thing ahead of you.  
  
A left, then a right and then Sawyer skids in a pool of blood, grabbing the wall with a frantic cry.  
  
Anything to avoid falling into the thing on the floor that once was a human being.  
  
It's charred beyond recognition, bones seemingly melting and reshaping themselves into a warped shape that screams of pain.  
  
Sawyer's turned white and his eyes have grown dark and dull as he takes in what's before them.  
  
Skinner knows he's not fairing much better. But it's not the sight that gets him, it's the smell of burnt flesh; warm and sweet, that makes him turn and retch- dry heaves followed by gulps of air that makes it worse, so much worse.  
  
There's at least three that are burnt beyond recognition. The screaming comes from a Wiccan; flesh black with a dark crust of burns. Others simply groan or whisper- parts of their faces melted away or arms and legs lying at twisted, unnatural angles.  
  
Nemo, Jekyll and Mina round the corner from the other side of the carnage: Jekyll taking in the bleeding without a word, immediately crouching to the wounded, pressing his jacket to the injuries; Mina stopping dead, a hand to her mouth, her face white, bending down to dip her hands in the blood of a corpse; Nemo turning calling to the crew that have come running to fetch bandages, morphine...  
  
The soldered walls are leaking again- all repairs seemingly ripped open. Water mixes with the blood on the floor.

* * *

Once again they are avoiding eye contact with each other, though Jekyll knows that this time it's more to do with not breaking; not having to see your pain in someone else and have to acknowledge it, than with mistrust.  
  
Skinner and Sawyer have the unhappy duty of clearing away the dead. Their hands are so gentle on the fragile, charred skin and bones, but Tom's face is beyond despair and Skinner's coat speaks of his revulsion in every jerking movement he makes.  
  
The injured are on stretchers, morphine dulling their screams into groans. Mina, face as expressionless as ever is moving from one to another, applying fresh bandages as old ones are soaked through quickly with arterial red. Other crew members quickly wheel away the stretchers to the waiting doctors in the medical bay.  
  
And he and Nemo slowly, cautiously, quietly enter the room from which this all started. Activity pauses in the corridor, Skinner and Sawyer holding their breath, Mina watching with intense eyes.  
  
It is filled with mirrors. Nothing but mirrors. Many lean against the walls, reflecting each other. In the centre of the room the two mirrors that remained intact last time are still standing.  
  
But the glass is black.  
  
Nemo pauses, startled and Jekyll lets an exclamation slip from between his lips.  
  
"What is it?" Calls Sawyer from outside.  
  
The glass has not been painted; it is simply a black well. There is no fire or brimstone, nothing to suggest what could have caused the butchery in the hallway.  
  
"It's...unexpected..." Jekyll calls back, shooting a quick look at Nemo that is met with a similar look of disbelief. Nemo moves towards the doorway and in urgent tones describes the glass. Jekyll moves closer towards it.  
  
There is a shadowed reflection of him, Henry Jekyll; Edward is invisible and silent.  
  
Behind him, Nemo approaches and there is a dark reflection of him in the mirror.  
  
"What is this Nemo?" Jekyll asks making eye contact with him in the glass.  
  
"It is—" Nemo begins, and frowns, seemingly recalling an unpleasant memory. "It is reminiscent of old stories, ancient superstitions about mirrors."  
  
"Where from?" Asks Jekyll.  
  
"Book study, doctor." Replies Nemo.  
  
Nemo's face is troubled, his eyes flicker over every mirror in the room. "What do you see doctor when you look in a mirror?"  
  
Jekyll raises his eyebrows, "Edward- he's..."  
  
"No. Beyond Mr Hyde, the room is reflected?" Nemo asks, keeping his eyes fixed on the mirrors.  
  
"Well yes, but obviously in reverse-"  
  
"Exactly." Replies Nemo quickly, "What is seen in a mirror is not the same as what exists here in this world. It is changed. And with an infinity curve of mirrors such as the one that was here-"  
  
"-There are many such worlds..." replies Jekyll, catching on swiftly.  
  
"And what there is in this world is nothing compared to what there is in others. And when they used the door, they released these others..."  
  
There is a horrible silence as Jekyll takes on the full weight of what Nemo has said.  
  
Behind him there is movement and he looks around to see Skinner, Mina and Sawyer standing, visible eyes seemingly captivated by the sight of all the mirrors.  
  
"How much have you heard?" Jekyll asks them, eyes dark and full of trepidation.  
  
"Enough to understand what you're saying." Replies Skinner, his posture incredibly nervous, his voice almost swallowed up in the quiet of the room.  
  
"What sort of things are in these other worlds?" Asks Mina, eyes flickering between the black glass and Nemo.  
  
"Our reflections." Replies Nemo, eyes watching the mirror intensely.  
  
"Well yes," replies Tom worriedly, "But what else?"  
  
"You misunderstand;" states Nemo very evenly, very controlled, "Reflections are without purpose or will- some would say without soul,"  
  
Jekyll hears Skinner draw in a quick, frightened breath.  
  
"There are too many reflections and not enough soul to go around." Nemo, it seems, is only just accepting the import of these words himself. "The space between is full of... things that hunger for a soul."  
  
Jekyll feels all his hair begin to stand on end. His eyes widen.  
  
"Then... we are not alone?" He asks, quietly, almost a whisper.  
  
And as if in response to the question the glass comes to life with a scream; the blackness boiling and writhing, claws exploding from the molten surface, reaching, grasping for them...  
  
"God almighty!— "  
  
Nemo and Jekyll lunge backwards; behind them Mina, Sawyer and Skinner run to grab them, help them, move them away from the malevolent intelligence that seems intent on consuming them.  
  
It is with shock that Jekyll realises he needs help; the thing has a hold on him that it will not release and he feels it burning into his skin- his wrist smoking as Mina grasps him around the waist and pulls.  
  
But it won't let go.  
  
"HelpmeHelpme—" She's crying, and he can feel them both being pulled towards that terrible living blackness. Through the pain he can feel more hands pulling him away, arms wrestling for a firmer grip on him...  
  
And then abrupt release. A sound of breaking glass as Nemo swings a chair repeatedly into every mirror in the room—including the two in the centre. The screaming shifts into a high-pitched wail which dies off quickly. He feels Sawyer's sigh of relief, hears Skinner cursing repeatedly and is pulled to his feet by Mina, all of them standing and running to the door although the room is now quiet and calm.

* * *

It is in the corridor that they pause for breath; each retreating into their own shells of disbelief, disconnecting from the group, even as they work together.  
  
But their distance has become very, very dangerous, and Mina knows this.  
  
She reaches for Jekyll's wrist and takes in the noticeable wince when she gently touches the weal of burnt flesh.  
  
"Jesus—" begins Skinner.  
  
"Well, I guess we know what happened here." States Sawyer, eyes wide.  
  
"Do we?" Asks Jekyll. And Mina knows what he means.  
  
"At the moment all we have it ghost stories and folklore," she explains and Nemo nods in agreement, "We do not know what we are truly dealing with."  
  
"And there are only a few people on board who do..." Skinner continues.  
  
"Water and bandages first." She states, and Jekyll sighs in relief. Skinner dives into the next room to get the water and Nemo takes bandages from an abandoned pile in the debris scattered through the corridor.  
  
There is an exclamation of shock which makes them all turn sharply, as Skinner exits the room quickly carrying a basin.  
  
"The pipes aren't providing us with water anymore..." he explains, voice trembling.  
  
The basin is full of soil and fragments of bone.  
  
TBC...

* * *

Well, this thing just grows! Before I get down to thanking my reviewers individually I'd like to make a plea for just a few more reviews. I've now set my options to accept anonymous ones...  
  
Funyun: Why thank you! Yes, stranger things to come indeed, much stranger... I totally agree with you about Jekyll! However, the soft spot in my heart is for Skinner and Skinner alone (yes, call me weird if you like!) But how do you know he actually transformed? There's a hint in the story I'm giving you about what's to come, but nothing definite just yet... BTW, I love "Return", really liking the dynamics between Quatermain and Sawyer. There's amazing promise in that there story ... Nope, have not read "The Cure" Am I heading in the same direction? Ooh, spooky...  
  
Keyanna: Thank you! It's set to get darker I hope...You should read the trailer to find out exactly how dark. Your hair still purple? ;-)  
  
By the by, I hereby issue you with a challenge, find the poem from which the chapter titles are taken... 


	4. Things which are not

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stem from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.  
  
Author's Notes: Okay, I hate to be fan-girlish but my god, reading your wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful reviews is an absolute privilege and I have to give major thanks: ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThan kyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou...  
  
Once again, individual shouts at the end.  
  
PS: If any of y'all know any great Skinner-centric works then drop us a line.  
  
Brace yourselves; it's time to do some exposition.  
  
But don't get too comfortable, everything's not as it seems...

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter 4: Things which are not.

* * *

"What are we dealing with?"  
  
Jacobs blusters, flushes red and tries to stand up from the seat that Nemo has pushed him back into.  
  
"I don't know what—"  
  
Nemo forces him to sit down again. There is this terrible graciousness in his manner that Sawyer knows could boil over at any second.  
  
"Any falsehood is not welcome at this time Mr. Jacobs," Nemo states, eyes sparking, "I would suggest that you tell us absolutely everything."  
  
"And when he says absolutely everything" continues Jekyll, "we mean absolutely everything."  
  
A cliché that Tom recognises, but this cliché is beyond effective when coming from Jekyll. There is a darkness to him that Hyde does not have; something which Tom knows can only be glimpsed rarely. Something he spat out when he uttered the words 'sneaky blackguard', something he spits out now.  
  
Jacobs is beyond flustered, almost boiling with indignation.  
  
"You think that I have some ulterior motive? That in some way I am connected to the deaths of my dear friends? How dare you—"  
  
Tom sees him for what he is: A bland, blind little man, indifferent to the darkness surrounding him. Darkness embodied in Nemo; in Jekyll; in the roasted skin of a man in so much pain he couldn't stop screaming.  
  
"Shut up." States Sawyer and his voice carries a bitterness, an anger he didn't know it could contain.  
  
There is a pause; the colour beginning to fade from Jacobs' face as he takes several deep breaths and looks at Sawyer in some shock.  
  
He looks deflated, grey. "Fine," he states finally, voice deadened, "Fine. What is it you want to know?"  
  
"What are we dealing with?" Nemo repeats.  
  
The atmosphere still has that horrible inquisitional tack to it, and Tom folds his arms protectively as Jacobs shoots each of them a bitter glare.  
  
"We're not sure," He begins, mouth twisting around the words, "Perhaps a demon? Some sort of ambiguous demonic force: A motiveless malignity." He laughs a strange, hollow laugh. "Something we though we had under control."  
  
"You've been keeping this thing?" hisses Jekyll, and there is horror in his voice.  
  
Jacobs' face coils into an expression of distain. "We are not idiots Dr Jekyll; we do not seek to provoke the darker side of things and then keep them bottled up."  
  
Sawyer winces at the direct insult.  
  
Jacobs pauses, snorts as Jekyll backs off, retreating into a corner, and then continues: "We did not know what was happening at first. A few accidental fires in our old temple; banners would fall down, statues would be broken. Normal occurrences; perfectly acceptable if you were experimenting with new spells as we were."  
  
He frowns, sight focussing into his memories, "And then—chaos... Much the same as you've been experiencing here. Fires and... burns..."  
  
Jacobs seems to shudder. Tom knows the memory: The warm smell of cooked flesh—  
  
"We would heal our wounds, perform spells to calm things down—and they would for a time—then go back to the experiments and... 'it'... would happen again.  
  
"After a while we thought we had it figured out: The door we required for our magic was letting out something indigenous to the temple—something that had been there for years, something that wanted to do us harm.  
  
"We performed binding spells, packed everything up and left—soliciting your help to take us as far away as possible. The demon could have the place! We didn't want a fight, we wanted peace."  
  
"But it followed you." States Nemo and Sawyer can see the anger he is repressing. "And you didn't warn us. Even with the damage—you just continued with your experiments—"  
  
Jacobs looks at him, eyes with that same dull sheen of insolence.  
  
"—it wasn't indigenous, it's something you created." Rage is crackling from Nemo, threatening to set the situation alight.  
  
"No." States Jekyll suddenly, and both Sawyer and Nemo focus on him abruptly. "No, not that you created—that you released." He says; eyes locked on Jacobs.  
  
"Things without souls that we have always known about. Things indigenous to mirrors." he states nodding to Nemo and then looking at Sawyer, recalling the memory of their earlier discussion.  
  
"Things you gave a doorway to."

* * *

"And there's no way out?"  
  
"None at all." Skinner responds, avoiding eye contact desperately, picking at the bandages he is holding.  
  
Mina takes them from him with a sigh and begins wrapping them around the burn on the patient's leg. Skinner can barely watch this either- the sight causing aches all over his body- scar tissue tightening as if in sympathy.  
  
"So, you're sure that this is not a memory, or a sign of the trauma you must have—" Mina questions, seemingly absorbed in her task.  
  
"We've been over this before, haven't we?" Skinner responds abruptly. "It can't be a memory because I've never been there—"  
  
"And it is not a sign of trauma because it doesn't echo your own experience?" Mina looks up and into the holes where his eyes would be. She takes a deep breath. "Then we come back to another conclusion—that your dreams are a message."  
  
"Of what? From whom?" He asks, and he can feel trepidation bubbling in his throat.  
  
"I don't know Mr Skinner." She cuts him off, and there is distance in her eyes even as she attempts to reassure him with a sympathetic look.  
  
He has never felt so alone.  
  
Something else is seeking human contact and this isolates him, frightens him, and burns him in his sleep. He looks at his reflection in the mirror on the medical bay wall and sees his own wide eyes- empty holes surrounded by greasepaint.  
  
He turns to pick up more bandages, and as he does so, the ship gives an almighty groan- a metallic shudder.  
  
His hair begins to stand on end; he turns to shoot a frightened look at Mina, but he can no longer see her.  
  
The lights have gone out.

* * *

They stand in darkness.  
  
Jekyll can hear the sounds of movement; a rustling to his left.  
  
Something brushes past him softly.  
  
He jumps and turns around, wincing as Nemo brightens the lamp he is now holding.  
  
"What the hell is this?" asks Sawyer, and Jekyll can hear the fear in his whisper, something he knows is echoed in his eyes.  
  
"It's-"

* * *

He reaches for Mina's hand, and feels his heart contract with relief when he finds her small, cold fingers.  
  
In the blackness all he can hear is the sound of his own heart, and he feels the dizzy sensation of a shift in space—as if the walls have shrunk around him; a cloying sense of the air tightening, increasing in pressure as the walls move.  
  
He feels his skin begin to flush with heat, and he waits, breathless, for the groans and the feel of others scrabbling away, pulling themselves into a tight huddle.  
  
Instead he hears a clattering and feels the reassuring squeeze of Mina's fingers. Hears the flare of gas as she lights a lamp on the table.

* * *

_Henry_  
  
Edward's voice; insistent, harsh after weeks of silence.  
  
But it's not the only sound in Jacobs' room.  
  
"Do you hear them?" asks Sawyer and he can, Jekyll can hear them; Loud as a whisper, clear as snow:  
  
Voices; hundreds, whispering just beyond human hearing: Laughing, taunting, cajoling.  
  
Nemo draws his sword, the sound of metal scraping against metal too harsh in the soft sibilance created by the whispers.  
  
Jekyll feels panic beginning to tighten his chest, his breathing becoming audible.  
  
He watches Nemo looking wildly about, his breath visible.  
  
It is cold.  
  
_Henry please_  
  
"What is it?" He asks, voice sharply addressing Hyde, addressing anyone who might know what this is, anyone that might calm the rising terror he feels...  
  
_it burns_

* * *

"Do you hear them? Do you hear them?" His voice is a panicked rush and he watches Mina with wide eyes, afraid to release her hand.  
  
"Yes," She whispers, eyes darting around the room, larger than his, "I can hear them..."  
  
Skinner hears the sound beginning to build in the dark corners. It circles them, louder behind them, then in front...  
  
"It's cold..." she begins, and Skinner feels her jerk suddenly as she makes a lunge for the lantern, pulling it into her hand.  
  
The light in it is fading. Dying.  
_

* * *

Help me_  
  
His teeth are chattering. Jacobs is sitting stock still, Nemo still turning wildly, Sawyer has drawn his pistols and is watching Jekyll intensely.  
  
He can't but help looking at Edward:  
  
Something dark with light flickering behind it in the large dressing mirror; Edward—a shape writhing against this terrible light which grows brighter as the gas lamp fades.  
  
_Help me_  
  
Jekyll is drawn to the mirror even as the room around him grows darker.

* * *

He can see her breath even in the dark.  
  
They are reflected in the small mirror to his left- he can see them: his face painted white, invisible hands clutching thin air while ahead of him a lamp floats; its light fading. The invisible man the only visible one in the reflection.  
  
Behind them, he sees the shadows begin to writhe and shudder.  
  
The light goes out as Mina lets go of his hand.  
  
He hears the smash of broken glass and a dull thump.

* * *

Jekyll can feel his skin begin to stretch; his bones begin to rearrange themselves.  
  
A low moan escapes him as the pain dulls everything around him but the beat of his heart, the gasping in his lungs.  
  
He grabs his head, trying to hold it together as a pain threatens to cleave it open.  
  
He collapses, and around him the light fades.  
  
TBC...

* * *

Funyun: Ooooh! It's fun making you think/worry/wonder: I'll try to keep this up! If I answered any of you're questions I'd just give the whole plot away and that isn't fair... BTW: "I gotcha where I want ya and now I'm gonna eatcha!" Is a fantastic quote! Deeper? Hmm, depends, I think I'm spelling out what's to come- but that's just me- I already know all the answers, (apart from, of course the location of my Red Hot Chilli Peppers ticket, but that's another story...) Congratulations! Correct poem, though if you can guess the link between this work and Donne's masterpiece I'll be ultra- impressed... Jump starter ideas? Give us a while to think...  
  
Keyanna: Hyperbole?! What do you mean Hyperbole?! ;-) Funny you should mention my punctuation and spelling, they're so bad usually that my teachers think I'm dyslexic. No, I'm not kidding! Let's see if you like this chapter- bit off the garden path for me this time round...  
  
Crystal: Halleluiah! Another Skinner fan! Where've you been all this time? ;-) Seriously though, thanks for reviewing! Hmm, italics, I might if they were actually dreams, but... (Oops bit of a giveaway there!) 


	5. If I an ordinary nothing were,

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stem from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.  
  
Author's Notes: I need to watch this; it's taking over my life...  
  
I will be apologising in advance now for the incredibly long time between updates, but alas, the exams are now upon me (my first on June 18th) and I will take revision as the utmost priority. After the 30th it's green light all the way baby...  
  
Once again, individual shouts at the end.

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Five: If I an ordinary nothing were,

* * *

She wakes in pain. Nerves rubbed raw by the bright light, the antiseptic stench, the coldness of the floor beneath her. Too much sensation.  
  
Skinner is there: white greasepaint smeared, hovering above her, mouth turned down in a theatrical mask expression of worry.  
  
"Are you awake? Mina, are you alright? What is it? Are you hurt?"  
  
"I'm—" she begins and her voice is higher, a girlish alto. And she realises.  
  
She is not alright. She is better than alright, and at the same time, horribly, horribly afraid.  
  
Skinner is almost hysterical at her pause; he clutches at her hand with a fierce terror. She realises that, despite the fact he is not wearing gloves, his hand is visible- a faint ghostly outline like a reflection in glass.  
  
"I'm human." She states, and it takes a while to sink in. A moment of looking at the white ceiling before sitting up recognising the warmth in her skin; the itch of her eyes as the gaslight burns, the antiseptic smell which cloys her mouth, the throb of the Nautilus expanding in her ears...  
  
"And I'm visible, Jesus, Mina!" There is a note of happiness, even in the terror. "What have they done? What happened?"  
  
She stands up, slowly, heavily and sees her reflection.  
  
"God almighty, how?" Skinner continues, examining his hands where he kneels on the floor, "I'm almost visible, you can see me, right?"  
  
She looks at him, ghostly colour making him visible. But she feels distant. There is no more sense of his body heat, or his smell; she can no longer see his heart burning in his chest, his blood moving like lava; she can no longer feel power in her limbs or the breaking of her skin when she changes shape; or the itch in her mouth when her teeth expand or the burn of blood in her vision.  
  
She can however see herself in the mirror. A shock. She hasn't seen her reflection for some time now.  
  
"They've taken us..." she begins and the eyes of her reflection widen, "Oh god, oh god god..." It is there, horror, burning in the pit of her stomach. Time slows. She freezes.  
  
He watches her intensely for a moment then he stands suddenly; arms coming up to protectively bracket her as she reels from the enormity of it all.  
  
"No! They've taken us, they've taken what makes us strong, different—they've been planning this—destroy us but not by killing us—"  
  
She is panicked, frantic, swooning and grasping at Skinner's arms.  
  
"We're just normal, we're just human..."  
  
"Mina, stop!" Skinner clutches at her tightly. It is sudden pain and strength against which she has no defence.  
  
He waits and in the silence her breathing slows, her eyes focus on him—huge with fear. "It doesn't matter! It never mattered!" He states, eyes wide, and she knows he's trying to convince her as much as he's trying to convince himself.  
  
It's knowing that they've taken her, which makes her sick, dizzy. In the darkness, full of noises, whispers, part of her was stolen.  
  
She groans, and feels her face twist. "Of course it matters—" She almost retches at the terrible emptiness inside and the abrasion against her skin of her new senses: the gaslight is too bright; her skin smells antiseptic and warm.  
  
"No," Skinner repeats, emphatic, "No it doesn't. We were not defined by our abilities. You're still capable—"  
  
"Of what? I'm not even capable of voting, let alone fighting this—" There is hysteria in her voice which she can't clamp down and control. She feels she is spiralling, falling away.  
  
She hears desperation when he continues: "You are! You still can! It doesn't matter; look at Sawyer: A little boy out of his league, he still fights, he still—"  
  
"They've taken the one thing that made me qualified! What am I to do now? Brew up potions? Act the nurse?!" She breaks away and gestures to the men lying unconscious on the tables. "It can see you! I can't fight it—we're sitting targets—it's not long before this thing takes advantage and—!"  
  
She watches him stagger in fear, eyes shooting towards the bandages on the patients. Her vulnerability seems all the more terrifying when she realises that he cannot help her. She is now a woman alone; they are all just as vulnerable, alone and damaged.  
  
She feels sudden rage, anger boiling up, mixing with the fear and threatening to choke her.  
  
She swoops, hair and skirts tangling in the sudden movement, grabbing the first thing that comes to hand.  
  
She throws the chair at the mirror with incredible effort; it fractures into shards.  
  
It doesn't change anything though.

* * *

"Are you alright?" Sawyer is wide-eyed, blonde hair in disarray, anxiously hovering over Jekyll, who sits with his head clutched in his hands.  
  
Nemo doesn't look much better; he's pacing around the room as if he's a caged tiger. Skinner can see he is almost ash grey with fatigue, Jacobs sits on his seat, completely immobile. Skinner would think he were dead if he couldn't see the rise and fall of his chest.  
  
"Are you?" responds Skinner, "Because we're not sure what we are."  
  
Nemo's eyes focus on both Skinner and Mina with frightening intensity.  
  
"What happened?" He asks.  
  
"Mina's..." Skinner begins, and realises there is no word to describe the enormity of what has happened, what they are now.  
  
"I am no longer a vampire." She finishes for him, "And Mr Skinner is no longer entirely invisible."  
  
Nemo doesn't seem that staggered by this piece of news, however, and Skinner realises this is a bad sign.  
  
"What? What is it?" He asks, the dread that already filled his stomach expanding to press against his ribcage.  
  
Nemo shoots Jekyll a look before beginning.  
  
"Dr Jekyll collapsed—"  
  
A pause.  
  
"It would seem that—"  
  
And Skinner realises. "It's Hyde isn't it?"  
  
Mina's hand tightens on his arm, Sawyer shifts uncomfortably and Nemo doesn't break eye contact, not once and his eyes are burning.  
  
Jekyll doesn't move.  
  
There is a horrible silence.  
  
"And you?" Skinner finally states, feeling the need to break the stillness. His voice is strangely thick. He doesn't recognise it as his own.  
  
"Mr Sawyer and I feel—weakened." Nemo responds  
  
"Sapped." States Sawyer. "We reckon it already had Hyde because he's always been trapped in the mirrors and as for the rest of us—"  
  
He looks pointedly at Skinner.  
  
"How?" Asks Mina.  
  
"Ask him." Hisses Jekyll, and Skinner almost recoils from the terrible anger in his eyes as he raises his head and looks toward Jacobs.  
  
Jacobs is so still. Too still. Eyes unfocussed and fixed on some distant point. If Skinner were to bet, he would wager that the little spell in the dark had knocked some terror into the pig-headed shit; perhaps too much for him to be of any use.  
  
Sawyer shifts uncomfortably in his corner of the room; hating the silence, needing to fill it, eyes focussed all the time on Jacobs. "Nemo was correct—those things within the mirror have been released—Jacobs and the coven were experimenting and their spells released it." Skinner can hear pure fear in the rapid inflection.  
  
"And our missing abilities?" He questions, "What happened?"  
  
Another long pause, and in the silence Skinner watches Jekyll carefully. He's almost collapsed on the table, eyes bleary, and hands clutching at his head with a fierce desperation. He feels the same desperation seeping through his pores; hearing it seep into Sawyer's voice; watching it creep through Mina's stance...  
  
It's been some time since he called his condition an 'ability', but here, watching Mina and Jekyll react, and feeling for himself as if he's lost a leg he needs to run away, he begins to recognise how vulnerable they are, how desperately normal.  
  
Jacobs coughs. Skinner jumps at the sudden interruption.  
  
"It has been gaining power somehow" begins Jacobs, and his voice is rasping, dull in the silence. "Whatever happened, you can assume it was able to take these things from you because it was able to make contact with you- to leave the confines of its prison..."  
  
"You released it." States Mina, and there is a quiet bite to her voice. "And it's weakened us." Skinner can feel her clutching his arm with a weakness he didn't know she possessed.  
  
"Yes, Mrs Harker. But as I've said to your colleagues there is no point in becoming angry with me—you'll need your strength to deal with this demon."  
  
There is something sly, even amongst the anger in his tone. Skinner feels his hackles rise, anger as he realises what this man has done, has allowed to be done to them.  
  
"And how exactly do you propose we 'deal with it'?" He asks, "We're sitting ducks thanks to you and your messing with things you didn't understand."  
  
Jacobs sneers at him. "You won't need your—abilities—all you need is an exorcism."  
  
It was the wrong thing to say Skinner will think in hindsight:  
  
With a bang the Nautilus bucks. They are all thrown to the floor.  
  
And with a scream, all around them, the glass comes alive.

* * *

Ohgodohgod is all he can seem to think.  
  
In front of him Jekyll has overturned his chair in the scrabble; Mina and Skinner are clinging to each other, Skinner practically hauling her out of the room; Nemo has grabbed Jacobs by the shirt collar and has thrown him out of the door.  
  
He makes to run, but time seems to be moving too fast and he moves slowly, so very slowly and he can feel unbearable heat on the back of his neck.  
  
The floor beneath him seems to be shifting, moving, and at first he thinks it's the carpet, but the vibration is too deep.  
  
The floor is twisting beneath his feet.  
  
"Hurry! Hurry!" Nemo is bellowing at him, reaching out to grab Tom by the wrist.  
  
But the room is growing, stretching in the infinite way nightmares have.  
  
"Oh Jesus, Jesus—" he doesn't know who's saying it only knows that it's a desperate prayer against the things that are coming from around him.  
  
He reaches out, scrabbling, clawing at the tips of Nemo's fingers that stretch further to grasp him by the wrist. He feels pulled through molasses as they run from the room.  
  
He risks a look back, head turning in a slow, underwater cartwheel, and sees that it is no room. It's Hell. The walls are boiling masses of warped glass, stretching in glutton's arcs from the mirror which is a hole; somewhere to fall and never crawl out of. The metal has buckled and stretches in twisted screeches of sound.  
  
He scrambles as fast as he can away, back. They are all clinging to each other, breathing together. The door shuts with a resounding slam.  
  
But there is no respite. Around them the corridor comes alive.  
  
Burning, exploding, Jekyll yells and they all stagger.  
  
He's looking at them, moving too slowly as around him things spiral, but the thing that fixes in his mind is Mina's white, terrified face.  
  
The portholes boil, reaching for them, and Sawyer feels his hair singeing in the heat, his skin beginning to burn as the claws twist the metal around them, stretching, grasping...  
  
"Run! For god's sake—!" Mina is screaming and he does, faster, trailing the league behind him feeling them move in a protective oval; little scurrying ants.  
  
The Nautilus is possessed, a screaming, hunching, groaning monstrosity; they are buried in the belly, being swallowed, digested.  
  
He runs, he runs with them, panic searing through his heart.  
  
Around him the walls are closing in and the doors are slamming with every new direction he tries, and water is beginning to soak through his shoes.  
  
He can hear alarms echoing and Nemo shouting to his crew who move around them, flittering out of reach; all running, streaming away.  
  
A tremendous wrench and he feels the metal beneath his feet tear. And the water falls around him now soaking him, spurting through the cracks like blood, wet, dark and salty.  
  
Arms clamp around him and Skinner is there, pulling, Mina hauling him and Nemo shouting above it all: "Get to an escape pod! Get out! Get out now!" To anyone, crew, the league—  
  
But beneath him the floor gives way and no matter how hard he clutches at the arms above him he is falling, mouth filling with burning water, lungs streaming in the dark as he screams.  
  
He is falling down down down.

* * *

"Sawyer! Sawyer!" Skinner is practically screaming in desperation and Mina can feel tears streaming down her face, mixing with the water soaking her.  
  
The floor is buckling, tearing, behind them the glass is boiling, fires are raging and ahead the Nautilus is tearing itself to shreds.  
  
We are going to die, we are going to die, we are going to—  
  
The floor gives another tremendous wrench.  
  
She begins to fall, water swallowing her in a cold embrace.  
  
Eyes closed tight, holding the breath, holding the screams.  
  
There are arms with her in the dark, but no matter how hard she clings to them she is alone.  
  
She doesn't even know if they are alive.  
  
It is dark, she can no longer breathe, she feels heavy, she feels too much.  
  
She is drowning.  
  
TBC...

* * *

Shadow Darkholme: Why thank you! Lovely to hear from others!  
  
Crystal: I love to leave you on the edge of your seat! That's the formula (which might get a bit repetitive if I don't watch it) cliff-hanger for every chapter. Glad you understand the 'dreams', but do you? Are you sure? Hmm.... BTW feel free to ramble, just so long as you realise you have to share him with me (I'm sure we can work out a rota...)  
  
Funyun: Oh dear, I hate to distract you from good, honest work, but if you were born to read then you were born to write (it signifies your calling in life). Indeed, who are you kidding? I plan to do awful things with these characters, but before you shoot me I do love them, I really do! Nice guesswork, you and Keyanna are on the right tracks, keep going, all will become clear...  
  
Funky in Fishnet: Why thank you! A pleasure to hear from someone who thinks of me so highly! I love Rest in Peace by the way, good, gripping start, update soon (or else I'll send these soulless things round after you and then you'll be sorry...)  
  
Keyanna: You lovely intelligent stalker you! Just drop us a line anytime, it's always a pleasure to hear from you (I was a bit worried you'd abandoned me in the time between post and review...) Yes, demanding alas is not good at this point: exams Exams EXAMS!!! (Panic face). Love to hear you're playing the trailer game! (Bit spooky, you and I seem to be interested in the same things...) 


	6. As shadow, a light, and body must be her...

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stem from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.  
  
Author's Notes: Well, in the time since update a lot's happened to me, I've voted for the European parliament, watched Reagan's funeral, revised like a crazy thing, danced with my ex-boyfriend and come across more like a desperate lunatic than the suave sexy thing I was hoping to be, ah well....  
  
Now, I'm not sure how many of my readers are familiar with Edinburgh, but for those of you who are I must explain what occurs in this chapter. I AM ALTERING GEOGRAPHY DELIBERATELY. I know Edinburgh pretty well (my relatives live there) and I know that between Edinburgh's old town and the Firth of Forth (try saying that when you're drunk!) lies the New Town, Princes Street Gardens and Leith. So there's a walking distance of about 5 miles from water to city centre, and in this chapter that just won't work. So I have rotated Edinburgh (90° Counter-clockwise if you really want to know...) and placed it where Leith is; that's why we go straight from the water to the city centre. I know this is a huge geography change, but in order to write about the events that have taken place in very specific areas of Edinburgh then that's the easiest way for me to do it. My only other justification is that League takes place in the Steampunk era, so it's sort of AU. In this case geography can be very different, for example the cross channel causeway seen in LoEG Vol1 #1.  
  
Wish me luck for my first exam tomorrow...  
  
Individual shouts at the end (again).

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Six: As shadow, a light and body must be here.

* * *

He was soaked, and that was the strangest thing.  
  
Someone would have thought that with all the heat and the stillness of the air he would have dried off by now; but he sits on his chair, cards in his hands, completely and utterly sodden.  
  
He looks at the cards; it's an incredibly poor hand. He knows that the rules of the game mean he shouldn't show anything on his face but he can't help the disappointment spreading across his skin.  
  
Opposite him Quatermain laughs, slow and low.  
  
He looks at the pile of chips in front of him and there's practically none left; a little isolated stack on the big table. He must have been losing badly, but the previous dealings seem very distant and the more he tries to recall them, the more he mislays them in the watery murk.  
  
"You're losing quite badly you know." Quatermain states from the other side. "Perhaps you should just give up all together." The voice isn't his, it's darker, colder and echoed, reverberating with a strange doubled quality that wakes something in Sawyer's memory.  
  
Tom looks at him and is given the fleeting impression of someone entirely different.  
  
"Perhaps we should just call this a game."  
  
Quatermain leans back, cards still in his hand. Sawyer is aware once again of the wrongness in his movements, the coldness that surrounds this thing even as the heat of the room becomes stifling. The strange doubled quality to its voice.  
  
Movement in the shadows behind it.  
  
"What—"  
  
Even as he wonders the shadows begin to grow brighter.  
  
"I shouldn't worry," exclaims the thing, leaning forward once again. "You'll be fine."  
  
But that's not what makes him terrified, makes his heart suddenly clench in absolute fear with a sudden cold that spreads from the thing across the table. It's the sight of Hyde, flayed, strung up against the stone wall and bleeding; a soaked redness that seems to shudder in pain even as it looks at Sawyer, eyes wide and blue.  
  
Tom staggers backward and with the sudden clunk of his chair hitting the floor he becomes aware of the smell, the sound; screams and burnt flesh, the same ones he runs down corridors on the Nautilus to meet, echoing through these windowless rooms, dungeons: this entire bloodied, medieval torture chamber.  
  
Eyes darting from Hyde who's trying to speak to him but can't draw enough breath because of the blood pouring from out him mouth, to the people roasted, crying on the floor, amongst whom is a tattered black trilby and duster, torn, covered in blood and greasepaint.  
  
It's almost too much to take in; the eyes pleading, the burnt forms huddled in the corners, the cold seizing his muscles even as the heat from the walls becomes almost too much to bear. The scent: sweet and roasted and cloying. It's no longer an empty room, it's hell.  
  
It's coming towards him, no longer Quatermain but Dorian, all sinful decadence and dead eyes in the blood and heat; cold radiating from it winding him up, trapping him on the floor.  
  
"What are you?" he asks, words coming unbidden to his mouth even as the thing stands above him.  
  
"I'm something you released, Mr Sawyer, something that feeds on your pain, your despair," The thing smiles, languorously, empty. "Something looking to fill this soulless emptiness with a little colour." Once again it smiles and flickers, eyes black.  
  
He feels cold, beyond cold. And the heat seems to be disappearing along with the room, with the pleading eyes of Hyde. It's replaced by a deep cold ache in his chest and the feel of wood beneath his back and the terrible knowledge that even as the hell around him disappears the thing above him has not.  
  
It leans close, close enough to kiss.  
  
"You are losing badly Mr Sawyer. I am free, we are growing stronger every hour and the people who stand in my way are dead or dying."  
  
Tom scrabbles away. Cold, wet and alive, very alive. Aware too of the fire out in the Firth burning behind Dorian, the figures in the water swimming for shore. Back in Edinburgh in the docks, the thing in front of him even more terrifying in the real world.  
  
"Your Nautilus is destroyed, your League is destroyed. You cannot win this."  
  
There is a horrible purpose to its movements now as it comes towards him, and Tom knows that unless he gets away now he'll be bleeding on a wall.  
  
"No—" Whether it comes from him or someone else the intention is the same.  
  
He runs: Up, away; dodging around the corners, the walls that seem intent on holding him. Cold night air burning in his lungs, laced with the smell of burning oil. Onto the Royal Mile, slipping across cobbles. Muscles tight, bruised in complete agony, full of sensation. Suddenly in the real world; the Hell not quite forgotten but replaced by the memories of Mina's stricken face, Skinner's ghostly form, Jekyll's burning eyes.  
  
And cold, ominous cold that seems to bleed along behind him. He lunges into the warmth—the stale smell of beer and sweat and smoke in the gaslight. A pub, warm and tangible and protection from the blackness beyond its windows; all Scottish voices and concerned arms reaching out to hold him.  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
The voice is warm, concerned and in the haze of pain Sawyer feels nothing but panic, the desire to get away.  
  
"I'm fine—fine" he mumbles faces swimming before him. He reels backwards but the arms won't release him. "I have to go—let me go—"  
  
He feels trapped, drenched in the murky light and all that's anchoring him is this arm, attached to a hazy face that resolves itself into Quatermain.  
  
There is blind panic now sharpening everything and Sawyer swings wildly; hitting this person in the face with the first thing that comes to hand—the butt of his rifle.  
  
An old man staggers back, nose dripping with blood and it's not Quatermain he has hit—it's an innocent bystander. No, Quatermain is now behind him; flickering into Mina, then Dorian.  
  
He hits out wildly, striking another person and then another but the thing eludes him flittering around the corners of his vision, dodging between those who fight a standard bar brawl: all shouts and roars and glancing blows.  
  
Someone hits him and he staggers, grabbing a stool, swinging it, everything happening too fast, too sickeningly fast.  
  
Someone has a hold on the back of his neck and is dragging him with a force that he can't resist, even as he fights it—this feeling of invisible claws ripping into his clothes, his skin—dragging him out onto the street, into the cold night air.  
  
The stars twist above him. All is black.

* * *

He is alone, cold, drenched in sewage and stiffly scraping the cover back onto the drain. The houses loom above him, windows deserted and lights off; streetlamps weak and red in the dark. And thrumming through him, along with the pain and nausea is the incredible ache of bereavement.  
  
The intense heat of burning oil covering the water: a flaming cape, the cold which made his muscles tense and scream so that in a few seconds he could hardly swim except to paddle upright, mouth swallowing water along with air... He knows few of Nemo's crew survived—the bodies in the drains testifying— and he hasn't seen the rest of the League.  
  
Skinner's tempted to crawl back into the sewer and lie there; let the chewing numbness that follows each stab carry him off- back where it's warm and dark and the trickle of water can reassure him he isn't burning alive. Waiting in the dark for some ethereal form to carry him off again, perhaps Jekyll's voice again telling him everything will be fine, there's salve for the burns back on the Nautilus and morphine and respite from the snow and Sawyer mumbling his thanks over and over, tears in his voice saying: Quatermain's gone, don't you go too Icouldn'tdealwithtwosacrifices...  
  
Only when they get there there's no Nautilus, just sirens and fire engines rumbling off down towards the Firth; and Skinner comes back into himself with a groan, realising he's drifting, that he's collapsed on a street covered in blood and shit and soaked through, greasepaint gone, skin barely visible.  
  
He begins to crawl up the hill.

* * *

The weight of his boots would be enough to drag him down if he wasn't used to water.  
  
Perhaps he would have frozen sooner if the heat from the burning oil slick wasn't singeing his skin.  
  
Perhaps he might have done what a captain should—go down with his ship—if he didn't feel the need for retribution; the boiling hate of something that tears metal to shreds to smother and burn and drown the men within it.  
  
Of these men few remain—and he feels the loss keenly, burning in him like a stab to the chest.  
  
A captain should protect his crew.  
  
A team member should protect the team.  
  
They swim now, little dark forms in the water, and he can't see their faces; the docks rising like salvation from the fire of the Nautilus, which is twisted; intact but for the huge gash down her left side, made worse by the wrench of the metal and the oil that burns beneath it.  
  
Some don't swim, some float; some are dragged; some are no longer intact.  
  
Jacobs is floating off to his right, illuminated, intact. The temptation is strong to leave him to let him rot, let him sink into salty water: thick as blood in the night air.  
  
Nemo, however, knows he needs this floating fool.

* * *

It feels like blood pouring from her lungs, but it's seawater.  
  
She can feel the burn of sand beneath her hands and the weight of her soaked dress and the tightness against her skull of wet hair and the ache, the terrible ache of a burn on her face.  
  
All around her are retching, staggering forms in the dark, but she can't see who they are and she doesn't understand what they are saying and as hard as she clutches at the sand the world spins around her.  
  
She needs to know she's not alone—that there's someone she can cling to, to help her fight this thing because she can't do this alone.  
  
And that's when she sees him.  
  
She would give a prayer of thanks if it wasn't for the terrible burning in his eyes and all that comes out is "Jekyll, Thank you thank..."  
  
And it's him she clings to, even though he's almost too harsh when he pulls her to her feet, and it's him she turns to to ask: "Have you seen the others? We need to—"  
  
But it's not him that answers with a cold voice, all snarl in the dark: "We don't need the others."  
  
And it's as if she's falling again; struggling against his grip as sound seems to reverberate to her through a tunnel as she tries to speak, to cry for help when she realises she is alone...  
  
The last thing she feels is the back of his fist on her face.

* * *

He awakes at the graveyard gates. Black wrought iron, in the night locked up tight.  
  
He's on the wrong side.  
  
Sawyer, clothes shredded, back bleeding, knows he's trapped, and knows that he's here for a purpose.  
  
But he doesn't expect it when it comes.  
  
A grip around him that crushes him drags him suddenly up and backwards—flying through the air in an impossibly large wrench and he struggles against it—all arms and legs and wobbly pirouettes as he lands—fighting desperately.  
  
Tombs, glowing grey granite in the dark look like salvation, but even as he clings to them they seem to give him up- letting him be torn backwards.  
  
He's breathing so hard and fast and crying out so loud- but no-one sees or comes to help—  
  
Leaping again and again and again; all the way up the hill.  
  
Up past the church, past a moulding of the Grim Reaper dancing around his scythe.  
  
Fighting and losing and breathing.  
  
Up to another set of gates, right at the top in the corner, which he clings to, desperately fighting in a terrible clown dance, a puppet's ballet, a tattered black bird in ragged clothing about to be sucked backward into the space beyond the gates.  
  
He's losing the fight.  
  
TBC...

* * *

Surly: Hello! Sorry I missed you last post- I checked my reviews after updating. Why thank you; we aim to terrify! "We scare because we care" to quote Monsters Inc.  
  
Shadow Darkholme: I don't think that's a word, but never mind eh? (Exams in English Lit and I still don't know what good English is...) Oh yes, I'd agree about that evil thing, definitely! ;-) It's about to get far more twisted...  
  
Funky in Fishnet: You're welcome, but where's my update? ;-) Who says I have to keep you happy? There are more twists to come! I could kill them all with one flick of my wrist! (Perhaps I should change my pen-name to Jill the Ripper?)  
  
Crystal Nox: Nice name change by the way! Yeah, works for me, I work on Sunday so I can lock him up while I'm out... :-) Night of Broken Wings is shaping up nicely by the way. Oooh cliff-hanger, where'd that thought come from? Henry James, eh? As in 'Turn of the Screw', Henry James?  
  
Keyanna: Awww, thanks: "I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship" to quote! Nice to see I can still surprise, did you like this twist? Can you guess what happens next? ;-) Yes, I wondered who would comment on Mina not being able to swing the sword or fight back in the trailer. Ah ha! Killing characters; well, what's your opinion? There are still two versions of the end to this story... (It would seem I look forward to your reviews as much as you look forward to my updates!)  
  
Willow, Lady Thief: Freaky darling? Freaky darling?! Hurry me in the middle of exams and I'll give you 'my freaky darling'... ;-D  
  
Funyun: Well hell, I worried I'd lost my first reviewer! Lovely to hear from you; don't worry, tell me everything; but what on earth is softball? Is it like baseball? Or Rounders? 11 matches- Jesus God are you insane? Wow! A piece of American history! Good God, I've got a parasol from the Victorian era and a dress from the romantic era (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Pride and Prejudice) but that's it here. I always found American history lovely: raw and fascinating, if you want to know I took it for AS level over here along with Hitler's Germany... now I'm rambling! As for guessing, well, all is pretty much based on the soulless aspect and some of the lovely imagery in the poem esp. line 12...  
  
Sirhcvuli: Hello! Lovely to hear from you! They're not dead yet, that good enough? I can't promise anything for the future however, but I assure you, if everyone else is of the opinion that characters shouldn't die then I won't kill them. 


	7. For I am every dead thing

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stems from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours and of course Old Reekies' Terror Tour...  
  
Author's Notes: I want to thank you all for your patience, and the wonderful, encouraging reviews—it's fantastic to come away from English Literature and not have to envelop my mind in any more confounding contradictions.  
  
Anyway, individual shouts at the end.  
  
Here's the penultimate chapter; only one more to go after this...

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Seven: For I am every dead thing,

* * *

It's the stench and the cold and the quiet that makes it so harsh, so raw against his heart.  
  
He is not hurting; he is the hurt. Deep inside him, beneath his breastbone, pressing against his ribcage he can feel the loss, It makes him ache every time he takes a breath; with each step forward his head pounds with a distant feeling, a terrible sense of bereavement.  
  
He is alone; above him the buildings stretch upwards, almost toppling onto him with their height: their dizzy stretch into the blue light of the early morning sky. Not one lamp is lit; their windows are dark.  
  
Somewhere, above him, round the corner of the hill a city clock strikes two.  
  
His skin is crawling with the tightness of burns, of drying saltwater, and as he trudges upwards he feels the soles of his feet bruising on the paving stones. Skinner feels a deep cold within him and clutches at the remains of his coat, hands spasming in weak response at the effort, the remains of dried blood and faecal matter crumbling under his fingers.  
  
The hill stretches; twisting round one long corner and it's so very steep. He's exhausted from the swim for the shoreline, the fight against the currents and then the inevitable trudge through the sewers he'd been sucked into, falling over what could only have been bodies; too dark to see if it's Sawyer, or Mina he's tripping over or stepping in.  
  
His legs burn with a cold, tight pain and he crawls, stumbles, falls around the corner.  
  
Ahead of him scaffolding laces the night sky, a barrier of wood at this level, the smell of chipped stone seeping around it; under the small cracks too small for him to slip through.  
  
Dead end.  
  
Skinner turns; and the downhill pathway reels, stretch, twists with hallucinogenic accuracy. He begins the slow steps downward, bare feet tightening for grip on the steep stones, the unevenness of the street exaggerated by the swimming sensation of his vision—the sense his body has suddenly been separated from his head.  
  
Eleven steps later and he hears his name.  
  
Just the once—enough to make him cast about, body reeling for balance, eyes, ears searching for the voice—the familiar voice calling for attention.  
  
It is Mina.  
  
To his right the arcade stretches; all gilt and long shadows, and at the end, blood matting her hair and clothes soaked, she leans.  
  
The pain in his chest eases; stretches out into a spiral of relief. She sees him, he sees her and he knows he is no longer alone. He feels almost sick from the relief.  
  
He takes two steps forward, into the arcade and the night air is suddenly colder, suddenly icy.  
  
The windows are not windows—they are mirrors in the dark.  
  
He can see himself, or rather his coat in their blackened reflection; and behind him an infinity curve of mirrors—an infinity curve of movement.  
  
Mina is no longer ahead, and Skinner feels with the cold sense of realisation she never was, he is  
  
_Where we want you_  
  
And the glass behind him is coming to life with a voice, a shattering grind that reaches for him.  
  
There's a moment, where everything slows, and for one, perfectly clear, crystal moment he can almost see the faces of these things behind the surge of glass.  
  
And with this sight comes absolute terror.  
  
He runs, stripping off, the coat almost torn from his grasp and he feels the blind panic, the urgency. No-one screams for him to run but he does—legs stretching desperately.  
  
The glass is reaching for him, boiling with that purposeful movement he knows so well. And behind it he can hear the whispers, the sense of the darkness, the terror that comes creeping back when he thinks of the sense of Mina, struggling in the dark next to him.  
  
But he's alone now.  
  
And he realises with cold, clear accuracy that it doesn't matter he's lost his coat, the thin visibility of his skin means they—or rather it—can still see him.  
  
And he stretches—reaching for that clear, cold square of night air. He feels burning on the back of his skin, the hot, breathing air of the things behind that still move.  
  
That has a hold on him.  
  
A sharp burning on the back of his neck that he flails against; toppling out, slamming onto the hard ground.  
  
Grit burns across his knees and palms and he scrabbles, fast, moving away into the space, the freedom, looking behind to see the boiling retreating into fragments of shattered glass into a dark empty hole of an arcade.  
  
And the world reels with the abandon of the cold night air, and he lies back; naked, visible skin cooling against the deserted pavements. He breathes; a slow deep inhalation as the early morning sky wheels overhead.  
  
In the distance he can still hear the clang of the fire engines.

* * *

It's the fire bells that wake her, and the cold breeze against the crisping, tight skin on her face, and the flickering of candlelight on her inner eyelids.  
  
There's almost something church-like about that purity of sound.  
  
And almost god-like in the softness of the bed beneath her. She can feel the tickle of linen under her fingertips, the press of hot, tight wool against her skin, still damp.  
  
There's whispering in the room with her; a deep undercurrent that rushes against her ears.  
  
And she opens her eyes, knowing the voice, praying that it's not, that she's still alone.  
  
Jekyll sits at a dressing table, quietly conversing with the black glass of the mirror.  
  
She must inhale too quickly, or the bed sheets rustle when she sits up, but he breaks off, and looks at her; and in the wave of sickness and dizziness that follows all she can see is the cold, calculating look of his eyes.  
  
"Mrs Harker." He states, and the voice, while Jekyll's has none of his inflection. This is someone else, she realises; someone she knows. His eyes are so very familiar—their burn and shadowed coyness, but the skin is so very different.  
  
"Mr Hyde." She responds in the same measured tone of a formal greeting; all the while, watching him, calculating.  
  
He laughs, loud and clear, mouth curling in pleasure. "Oh yes," he responds, "I wondered how long it would take you to realise Henry's not at home." His smile is knowing and his eyes flick over her quickly, something of which she is uncomfortably aware.  
  
His smile widens as he moves towards her, and then fades as she moves, fast as she can, away, in to the corner of the room. Her eyes flick over his shoulder, twice to the door, once to the window, he could easily take her before she reached either.  
  
"You know, I would have expected a less terrified reaction—I saved your bloody life after all." He's watching her with a snarl, and she realises how very dangerous this is; he is no longer Henry Jekyll for all appearances. She wonders distantly how much of Edward's strength he has in this form.  
  
He takes another step towards her, and the urge to bolt, to run is almost overpowering; she feels her skin itch in fear with a cold, tightening shiver.  
  
"Why?" She questions, voice swallowed up in the shadowed corners of the room.  
  
"Simple, Mina, repayment." He smiles again, eyes skimming over her. "A deal's a deal. I give you this; you give me that—simple really."  
  
"I made no deal—"  
  
"The moment you reached for me, you made this deal." He leers now, moving closer, too close, with a snarl in his eyes; Jekyll's face, but Hyde hiding behind the veneer of respectability.  
  
"You can't tell me it offends your 'delicate sensibilities'; you were so willing with Dorian. You looked at me that first time, and I knew, and deep down Jekyll knew it would come to this eventually."  
  
He's close enough for her to smell.  
  
She runs.  
  
Every nerve in her body screams that she needs to get out now! But she knows, she knows she won't make it.  
  
And she doesn't; he has a hold on her that no matter how much she flails against she cannot fight.  
  
He throws her backwards onto the bed, and its softness is a sickening counterpoint to the violence. She is kicking, clawing; muscles weak and distant, and she could bite, but it wouldn't hurt him.  
  
His hands are tight around her wrists, and his skin burns with its heat. Her arms are trapped above her head, and her legs are trapped beneath his.  
  
She manages to scratch him, blood welling up beneath the wound in an angry path of fire.  
  
He just leans in close.  
  
Close enough for her to feel his breath on her neck.  
  
"Go on Mrs Harker; add to the illusion; make Henry feel like he's worth something in your estimation: Tell me you love me." He's smiling with Jekyll's face, but there's no kindness or respite in that smile.  
  
She turns her head away and begins to cry as he lifts her skirts.  
  
"He loves you, you know, watches your every move—he wants this just as much as-"  
  
And abruptly a release: Hyde is reeling away from her, staggering backwards, clutching his head, bellowing wordless pain.  
  
Back towards the dressing table, where in the mirror a bloodied face is watching his every move.  
  
Mina scrabbles, moving quickly, knowing this is her chance.  
  
The room seems to shroud itself in a dizzy murk, and she lunges for the first available weapon: a display sword from off the wall above the fireplace.  
  
Her muscles are shaking, and her skin is crawling, and the sword is too heavy. She is staggering under its weight, dragging it as she moves towards Hyde who is curled on the floor; Jekyll's skin seemingly boiling under the gaze of the thing in the mirror.  
  
She steels herself.  
  
She heaves the sword and swings it.

* * *

"Skinner."  
  
Nemo's face above him, swimming in the night sky.  
  
"Nemo," He responds, voice thick with exhaustion, "Didn't expect to see you here."  
  
It's a lucky coincidence, he thinks, rationale dim behind the pain; perhaps too lucky.  
  
"Are you here to finish me off?" He questions, voice slurring, recalling drunken nights where he'd return to the Nautilus beneath Nemo's disapproving gaze—jovial, brazen; even now, knowing that the thing is here, to do what it didn't manage in the arcade.  
  
The thing frowns.  
  
"Mr Skinner, you are unclothed, visible and burnt. I can only summarise this rather unusual greeting is the result of your injuries." He reaches down, hands warm, and real and comforting. "Nevertheless, it is more of a relief than I would like to see you here."  
  
He feels the warmth of a coat—woollen, heavy with softness, and brandy in his throat, that brings everything back into focus.  
  
Nemo: real and close and a formal, comforting respite against the solitude and bereavement.  
  
Behind him, Jacobs—wet, bloodied and curled around the weight of a door.  
  
Skinner, sensation creeping back into his limbs, knows he is no longer alone.  
  
He grins freely, skin stretching painfully.  
  
"Jesus, Nemo—you're alive—I didn't think anyone else had made it..." and the relief, the unbearable lightness, even as he looks at Jacobs.  
  
Nemo smiles softly, and Skinner knows he's not alone in this relief, this small victory.  
  
"We need to move..." Jacobs whines, and Skinner sees he's sweating beneath the weight of the door.  
  
Let him sweat, he thinks, let him bleed.  
  
Nemo acknowledges this statement with a small nod. Behind him, the hill leads straight onto the darkness of the Royal Mile. Beneath his feet Skinner can hear the crunch of glass.  
  
Nemo's eyes darken as he looks to Jacobs. "Where is it?" He snaps, coldly. Skinner is suddenly glad for his terrifying formality.  
  
He turns back to Skinner, even as Jacobs responds: "Niddry Street."  
  
The flicker of recognition in Skinner's mind; he looks to Nemo for some sign of what 'it' is, what they are going to do now.  
  
And the relief in his face, the joy that ripples through him when Nemo responds:  
  
"We are finishing this. We are exorcising this demon."

* * *

"Oh god, oh god..." A running mantra, weak, is wavering under her shock even as she drops the sword and collapses back, sitting on the edge of the bed.  
  
He's flayed.  
  
Standing before her, bloodied, towering, panting with the effort of a transformation, Hyde's body, but Jekyll's eyes; kind, reaching out for her.  
  
"Mina, Mina—are you all right?"  
  
She's completely disconnected, she feels herself falling away, faster than she can hold onto the reality.  
  
"Yes—" She responds thickly, "How—what—" something needs to click in her understanding, she's almost too dizzy to take it all in.  
  
But it's all right; he holds her hands almost reverentially, and he's so gentle that the shadows, the room suddenly seem less threatening.  
  
"He made a deal with these things—if he weakens the league, stops you from destroying them, then he gets complete freedom—gets control of what he can see in the mirror." His voice is urgent, concerned.  
  
She looks at the skin, completely damaged. "So why not just let him out in full?" She asks. The full story, the understanding will help she thinks.  
  
"They couldn't—they're not strong enough—mirrors are both a blessing and a curse, we're not in them long enough for them to have full control over us.  
  
"That's why Skinner's only partially visible; and they couldn't let Hyde free fully; and they could only take away your vampirism—they couldn't destroy you fully they're so limited, they're so weak—their energy comes from us, one glimpse feeds them, but once that energy is used up..."  
  
She reaches out to touch his arm and her fingers come away bloodied.  
  
"They have this form when Hyde's out—they feed off it." He explains, eyes sad, smile pained. "They want to stop us—just us for the moment. The Wiccans let them out, they feed off us, and once we're destroyed, or too weak to fight back, they'll start feeding off others."  
  
She's so weak, so tired, and fighting against the shock desperately.  
  
"We've got to stop them—we've got to—" she begins to swoon, even as she feels him picking her up, cradling her as they leave.

* * *

All around him he can smell the rankness of freshly rotting bodies, the scent of human excrement and the copper of blood.  
  
The final lurch sends him flying—down on to his back, where he lies, sprawled in the mud.  
  
Tom moves, and hears the sigh of a bullet.  
  
The pain splits his thigh in two.  
  
He wants to scream or groan, but a cold hand clamps over his mouth and the smell of rotting flesh creeps strongly into his nose.  
  
_"Don't move"_ it whispers in the voice of a girl; quietly, breathily in the pitch blackness.  
  
_"You move, and they'll shoot you."_ Her smell of decomposition is strong, and mixed with the scent of his blood makes him want to retch.  
  
He doesn't move, he cannot move.  
  
In the dark he feels his body begin to decompose.  
  
He can feel acid trickling down his stomach walls, and his muscles relaxing, spreading like oil across water.  
  
There is the prickle of something growing across his skin, splitting it in a smooth, crawling motion. Beneath him he can feel worms crawling upwards, burrowing into his skin.  
  
His skin begins to peel back, curling away in rotten clumps from his muscles; which, in turn begin to decay.  
  
He is rotting alive.

* * *

They stand on top of the South Bridge, Jacobs sweating freely, Skinner clutching the coat to him and Nemo looking down, over the wall to the Cowgate below.  
  
Scaffolding had forced the detour—blocking their route into Niddry Street. Here, up high Nemo can smell the shit, hear the beery roar of the pubs below, see the other unblocked entrance to Niddry Street below him.  
  
Skinner moves to stand beside him.  
  
"It's at least a four-story drop." He states, eyes looking to Nemo, wide in the half-light. "Are you going to do this?"  
  
Nemo steps up, feet firm, balance impeccable.  
  
He jumps off.

* * *

The warmth through the glass is almost comforting; people move freely behind it—warped in the irregular panes.  
  
In front of him stands Nemo, imposing, regal, watching Jacobs unlock the door with something akin to fury. The door clicks, swings back into a hallway, dark, cold with the smell of disuse.  
  
A man staggers from the pub next door, coughing freely, warbling his way down the street away from them, and Skinner envies his normality. The need for drink almost burns in his mouth.  
  
Jacobs steps in, turns and accepts the door from Nemo.  
  
"We need candles—there should be some in that box." Jacobs states, voice quiet in the small confines as he shuts the door behind them.  
  
Skinner bends down and picks it up, the smell of wax reaching out with the wetness of cardboard beneath his fingertips.  
  
Jacobs is already climbing the set of stairs ahead, up to the floor above, the squeak of wood beneath his feet almost unnatural in the quiet.  
  
Nemo looks to Skinner, who nods, acknowledging that he is ready for this; they begin to climb.  
  
The draft is icy, and as he reaches the landing and sees the open hole in the wall Skinner knows this is the last place in the world he wants to enter. It's pitch black, even when Jacobs takes a candle from the box and lights it, using a guttering match.  
  
The light barely catches the scratchy of stone in the gloom, the arch of vault ceilings above him. The distance of the tunnel, a long street, terrifying in its displaced normality—it could exist outside, but it's hidden away, here.  
  
To their left: cold, black doorways, voids in the gloom, containing nothing but this terrifying emptiness. Until there is a glint from one about halfway down—a sliver of movement in the blackness.  
  
It's this one that Jacobs enters; suddenly multiplied by mirrors, hundreds of them.  
  
He stops, feeling the sweat beginning to break out; cold across his skin. Skinner recognises the feel of stone behind him, the oppression of the blackness: he's been here before, when the air was thick with screams, and the walls were an unbearable, heated barrier.  
  
Skinner waits outside, and he knows his heart is beating loud enough for everyone to hear; the nightmare of being trapped in a room filled with mirrors looming before him.  
  
Jacobs turns, looks directly at him, and gestures to the circle of salt on the floor.  
  
"Its fine," He states, voice bouncing off the walls, "we're protected, this is our temple."  
  
Nemo looks to Skinner, calm, implacable and it's that moment of assurance that allows Skinner to step into the circle.  
  
His skin still itches with the need to run, to get out, and he feels his heart pressing against his lungs—to big suddenly for his ribcage.  
  
"It's simple," begins Jacobs, blood trickling in a thin stream from his brow, "all we need to do is light these candles—I'll chant a little, and then we destroy the doorway this thing entered by."  
  
He seems too calm, too centred for this, and Skinner wonders for a moment if it really is Jacobs, if this isn't some other trick, some other reflection to confuse them.  
  
His heart expands painfully.  
  
Nemo hands him a candle, waxy, like melting flesh beneath his fingers. He lights it from the flickering match Jacobs hands out to him, and in the brief flare of light he sees movement in the corner.  
  
There's nothing there.  
  
Or that's what he tells himself, even when he sees it again and again; each time he lights a candle.  
  
Just a flutter, something in the corner of his vision.  
  
He feels his lungs begin to burn in the cloying smoke from the candles—light hurting his eyes as it rebounds from mirror to mirror.  
  
"We're ready." Jacobs states—the same flat dead voice.  
  
And the darkness moves—people come from the blackness, shapes pouring from the corners of the room.  
  
And Skinner knows them.  
  
They're the ones he burns with, the ones whose flesh melts with his; whose lungs boil in the hell the vaults become at night.  
  
Their flesh is black; their eyes bleed; their melting arms reach for him.  
  
And he feels the heat crawling across his skin, searing his mouth, his nose with every breath.  
  
He flails—backwards, away from the illuminated forms, glowing in the candlelight; he feels Nemo's arms around him and can hear someone asking him what's happening, what's the matter?  
  
The pain blisters through him; his fat boiling, his skin charring, his blood seeping through pores in hot waves of sweat that blister the tender flesh.  
  
They come for him still.  
  
He begins to scream.  
  
TBC...

* * *

Funky in Fishnet: Oh my god! You complete angel! I can't believe you credit me at the start of a story! So, so happy! I love it... Beautiful feeling of constriction, suspicion and a lovely sinister tone...  
  
Willow, Lady Thief: "Mudblood." / "Eunuch." Ha! :-D Lovely to receive your thoroughly charming email by the way.  
  
Sirhcvuli: Well, someone else has pleaded with me not to kill characters; you might be in luck...  
  
Funyun: Oh goodness indeed! Anyway, Rounders is a cross between cricket and baseball and AS-level, well, there are 3 main exam stages in England: GCSEs at 16, AS at 17 and A-level at 18: AS constitutes half of the marks for your A-level. Now to the chapter: How do you know its Skinner on the floor? All I said was a hat and coat; Why? Perhaps he's been to this very hot place before... As for your other questions: let's hope this chapter sorts some of that out... ;-)  
  
Crystal Nox: Happiness is: Skinner tied up and comparisons to Henry James!  
  
Keyanna: Oh yes, constant updates, even though I should have been revising! Sorry this one took so long, but it is longer than any of the others, wanted to make it good. Thank you once again for your thoughts; they're a guide for me whenever I write, and I love receiving them. Nice story plan by the way! When on earth will you write something for this fandom? If your stories are as wonderful as your reviews I couldn't wait for the outcome...  
  
Beautiful Immortal: As requested...  
  
Accendo Caliendrum: Oh yes, complete sicko; twisted, and psychologically damaged—it's those exams... 


	8. A quintessence even from nothingness

Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stems from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours and of course Old Reekies' Terror Tour...

Author's Notes: IT'S THE FINAL CHAPTER!

Lord, it's been a wonderful ride—from sceptical reviews to wonderful reviews; from cries of "I don't understand!" to "It rocks!"; from "Crystal" to "Nox" and "Willow" to "The Lady"—we've been many places together.

I must apologise, grovel and beg your forgiveness for the lateness of this chapter; unfortunately writer's block struck, and hasn't let up yet. However, have no fear! A sequel may be in the works...

Once again I have to thank you all; this story wouldn't have happened without your consistently encouraging, charming reviews (and interesting tangents of thought eh Crystal Nox?) Special thanks to my longest running reviewers Keyanna and Funyun, without you two and your incredibly detailed, credible hyperbole (:-D Kei!) this wouldn't have made it past chapter two.

Individual shouts at the end.

* * *

Shards

* * *

Chapter Eight: A quintessence even from nothingness

* * *

The sky is spinning.

Night air, cool and dark and crisp; the breeze against her flesh. The sense of warmth beneath her shoulders, neck and knees—a soft pressure, all enveloping. The feeling of hands, cradling her, warm and sticky.

And a jaunt, a lumbering step which bounces through her bones.

Mina looks up to see Hyde—or Jekyll—she is no longer sure what to call him. She sees the blood running in rivulets across his ruined face—splitting apart, coming back together, small dancing drops, pooling in the hollows beneath his eyes.

There is a strange comfort in this—being carried, bathed in blood, a newborn human; no longer hungering to sink her mouth into his neck, or lick the rivulets off. Instead the blood is sticky; her skin itches where it has soaked through her dress.

A hollowed out, dissonant peace.

And at the same time, a horrible pain, a feeling of intense loss—the knowledge, tearing her that if this is what has happened to Jekyll, then what has become of the others?; Sawyer, whose eyes sparked, defiant, and angry and terrified as they ran; Skinner and the feel of his panic trembling through his hand—warm and scarred and callused in the dark; Nemo and his formalities, his calm buttoned up, his burning eyes?

They are alone on the streets; the empty witching hour breathing down on them; apart from the stealthy sound of footfalls, nothing, a building silence.

She coughs softly, sound almost lost in the dull, cold air. Jekyll's eyes flicker to her, a smile tears distantly across his face.

She could almost smile back.

The streets stretch out ahead. "Where—?" She begins, softly, dimly.

His voice is quieter than hers when he cuts her off:

"I can smell them."

A small peace, a small happiness spreads through her.

His eyes, darting around, they don't stop moving; not once does he stop looking. She can almost feel through his skin, see what he is seeing; Hyde's senses, acute, tender; the glow of the dark, the throb of the stones;

and the smell of the familiar, the comforting.

"Only Skinner and Nemo."

"Are they alive?" She whispers, moving in her perch, skirts rustling in the dark.

He hums, and the air moves aside with this intensity of sound; she can't breathe in this waiting space.

"I think so." Comes the reply: small, and indistinct.

She feels their pace increase.

* * *

There is a terrible intensity to his feeling now his skin is gone.

The rawness of the night air on his nerves, clogging and coagulating in the new-born stickiness; the sense of bile spilling from his liver; acid dripping through his muscles.

Rotting away; skin like shredded leather, eyes milky with their marble hardness.

He can still move; twitching at the writhing, crawling beneath his skin as intestines uncoil themselves, muscles lose their tautness, fluids pool and shift and slosh through his body.

His whole mind rebels at this; this seeping away of the flesh, this inability to connect. He burns with the sheer agony, the tightness in his chest coiling, cleaving. He wants to scream to run, to shout blind agony to the sky, to save Mina and Jekyll and Skinner and Nemo, to cry at their graves, to loosen the guilt, to have his body back.

He recoils at the sudden brush of contact against his hand, the smell of decomposition that seeps through his skin coating him; rancid oil.

The fear that crawls through him, eating up what little of this there is.

This hiss of this other beside him, this embodiment of the living nightmare. His dead counterpart. What he will become if he lies here, lies here just lies here.

"Just lie there, just do as your told, don't move—don't"

"I'm dying alive, I'm feeling all of this, and you—you"

"do anything to bring them to you, to draw their attention. They"

"tell me to lie here, to rot, well, go to hell if we're not already there, and take your"

"persecuted us enough in life, all the children, the mothers, the fathers, the"

"goddamn advice. I'm not dead, why suffer with you? Who the hell are you? What"

"covenanters, we were alone. We are food now, to hell, for hell, trapped here, like you and you friends."

"the hell are you doing here?"

The hiss of indrawn breath, the flail of failing lungs against the oppression of the blackness above.

He breathes.

"What the hell do you know about my friends?"

She whispers. Hurried, rushed; the hiss of final breath escaping.

"They're damned. It knows, it watches. It eats us up and it waits. It's waited so long we're almost all gone. It's getting ready, the final showdown; the big finale. It knows what you wanted to do, what you're doing now, it burns, so badly he fears fire and it knows, it sees, and your woman, your monster, your crewless, they're eaten eating alone..."

A pause above him, the waiting silence of despair.

"We are, each of us, alone. And without their doorway, they're damned."

* * *

The golden glass is warm against the blackness; pub light, beery and rich on the cobblestones. Jekyll peers through the little panes, warped enough, she knows, that he won't be seen in the drunken inside.

"Upstairs." He states, "Jacobs, Nemo and Skinner." His eyes slide away from the window, down to her, where she leans against the wall. She feels the abrupt tingle of cold against her skin, the shiver of what? Anticipation?

And then his eyes drag away, to her left.

A small door; paint flaking, blue shredding off, dark, hollowed-out in the black air.

He moves; the graceful step of Jekyll she knows so well, unwieldy in Hyde's body. A breath of warm air, the smear of blood across her dress as his arm brushes across her.

She's watching him, so intently, in the gathering gloom, fear and gratefulness and something hot moving in the pit of her spine.

He presses his fingers beneath the hinges and pushes the pins out.

The door swings inward; cold groans out in a dead, still musk.

Inside: The blue, faded wreck of a hallway; the stairs wooden, sanded and sagging beneath the moisture of condensation. Somewhere ahead, the sounds, refractive and doubled, of movement.

Jekyll looks to her, eyes blue in the dullness.

She steps past him, inside and stands at the base of the stairs, stands in the waiting stillness.

* * *

"I don't accept that, there's always a way—"

Her decay moves against his anger, with a sigh of stagnant air.

"None, nothing; wish for what you will it won't allow you. The doorway was kept here, too far for you to reach—"

The sudden break, the air becomes cold and crisp again for one instant; a breakthrough?

"Doorway?" He asks, "The way this thing gets in? It was kept here?"

"This is the transitional place; everything comes here, no solid form, you wait till the next. The doorway, it waits till it's called: mirrors, asylums, holes, white rabbits, rings, trees wardrobes: Wiccans calling, your nightmares hot like food for it—"

"So it took advantage and made the doorway its exit? Feeding on our nightmares to keep it alive?" The pieces keep solidifying, arranging themselves in his head.

"And it's strong again. It brings the doorway back."

The breeze again, the stagnation and stalemate lifting in his head. Hope.

"To here? Where I could reach it?"

* * *

Screaming; loud and pained and horror-filled.

The black hole in front torn open like a mouth, screaming it's nightmares out with Skinner's voice.

She lunges through, toppling into the blackness and in her mind the story of Alice: The account of falling through and down down down springs to mind; she's following her painted white Rabbit, who screams out that it's too late.

She doesn't want to be too late.

No one saved Alice; but she'll save them all, I will, she mantras, even without her gift.

Behind her Jekyll stumbles through; blocking out the little light from behind.

Ahead is the blazing of light, golden and hotly flickering against the vaulted stones.

Running towards them; the same hollowing rebound of voices as that time on the Nautilus, the same pit of fear in her stomach, all churning and boiling, and the knowledge deep down, deeply distant in her that this is not something she wants to see.

The room is ablaze with light when she rounds the corner. Dazzling; candles, gilt and mirrors burning her eyes.

And Skinner in the centre, thrashing wildly, screaming, it burns, oh God, it burns...

So many mirrors; so many black reflections, boiling glasses.

The terror shaking through her, the knock as her breath leaves her body.

But he's screaming, and behind him Jacobs is writhing on the floor, soundless.

Running to them.

And she is there, supporting the white rabbit with Nemo; holding him upright, the solidity of Skinner beneath her hands grounding, helping her, him.

Even in the whirling, the reality, the joy is sharp and clear. Nemo's eyes flashing thankfulness and desperation in the brightness.

And the sound behind, around, next to her of whispering, crawling, chewing and burning. Time seems to move too fast; she feels as if she's swimming through it. The burning knowledge, like ice crawling up her back, that this is not where she wants to be.

Get out, away, now...

Turning to run, and Hyde's standing in the mirror, Jekyll boiling on the floor under his gaze.

It's too late.

_He_ stands up.

Smile dark on his face, eyes burning, and she backs away so fast. Nemo shooting her such confused looks and Skinner almost rigid with the pain, falling to the floor.

Turning to run away, back, away from Hyde's eyes in Jekyll's face,

Into Jacobs.

Whose eyes are black.

He just knocks her down.

* * *

The dull hump of sound as the air around him changes, faster than he can breathe with his ragged lungs.

Another layer of decay is added to the mix.

Sawyer knows, just as he knows without seeing that he has corroded, that it is here.

The doorway.

And it burns in him, slowly, hotly, this knowledge; that he can do this, put it all right again, save the others, wherever they are rotting, save this thing next to him, that speaks in the broken language of the dead.

And he forces the rotten limbs to press down, into the mud.

And he forces the dead weight of him body to roll.

And he crawls.

Towards it, this shape in the dark ignoring her hisses behind him, ignoring the groans from around him as he crawls through what could only be other bodies.

Another shot rents the air; hits him in the back.

And he feels it: excruciating pain, white hot, another fractured bone.

So much pain.

* * *

"What are you hoping to accomplish here?" It asks, the mocking monstrosity, eyes black in Jacobs, voice multiplied in the one throat.

Nemo feels the press of tight anger in his lungs.

Mina scrabbles to her feet in front of him, Skinner grasps weakly at his arm, breathing so heavy in the thick air, eyes unfocussed in his pain.

Behind him; Jekyll, radiating malice.

"Really now, what were you trying to do?" It smiles, the smile a cat would give to a mouse to take to its grave. It's black eyes looking in turn at Mina, himself, then Skinner, who groans and hunkers down even more.

The anger boils up tighter, flaming hot.

"We _will_ destroy you!" He spits at the thing, holding onto Skinner tightly, willing him to stand; willing recovery.

"Who is '_we_'?" It asks in return, smiling still, "You and...Your invisible friend? Your fangless vampire?" It grins now, teeth too sharp in Jacobs face, mouth too twisted.

The anger boils over, sizzling hot, hissing against the cold fear. Vision almost bleached with this heat, everything so unjust; he lunges at the thing.

All breath disappears against a wall of force; sucked out as he flies backwards like a stone; smashing into a mirror, shards biting into his back as it shatters beneath him.

He seizes one sliver, cold, slicing into his hand, and lunges again, slicing at its face, cutting deep, the blood oozing out, black and thick.

And hands pinning him, forcing him away, backwards, beside him Mina, gasping as behind them Jekyll holds her hair and his neck.

He fights.

But Jekyll doesn't move.

He just snarls.

* * *

She can't breathe, and her skin is pulled so tight.

Pain runs through her face, burning, so harsh. Her eyes are rolled so far down to watch this that they ache.

Nemo next to her still struggles, but his face is colouring in his fight to breathe against the arm wrapped around his throat.

"ENOUGH!"

And it is, god it is, she can't take more.

But Jekyll's arms don't release them.

Instead, Skinner, tears streaking through the greasepaint, is standing and grasping blind-fingered at an oil can.

"You wanted a sacrifice to end this—that's all we need to end this: a goddamn sacrifice, so you can bloody well have it!" And he douses himself.

And the thing begins to laugh.

Laughing as if it's sucking the air from the room.

"YES! Sacrifice yourself! We won't be destroyed! You need the door; and that my painted one is taken care of." And it smiles, so hungrily.

Next to her, Nemo slumps, unconscious.

She's crying now, face wet with tears and she knows, knows with everything left that this is it; they have failed.

"The more you hurt, the more we feed, the more pain, the more of us there are; all those that burned in these tunnels, all souls that rotted in the churchyard prison, all those that drowned, or split or burnt on your fine ship: we feed on."

The very blood pouring from it seems to swell, the skin to boil away, it is there, forming, changing, and she closes her eyes as it moves towards Skinner; reaching with those boiling limbs.

"We are the eaters of souls: and we are so hungry. We'll have you, and then we'll have more."

* * *

Time is like oil, thick, black, heavy.

Sliding through the filth from one side to the other, the pain burning through him, the whistle of bullets missing, just.

The hammer blow when one hits; tearing through him.

Five, he counts; five bloodied holes it takes before he feels the sandpaper-rough wood beneath his fingers.

Six before he gets the matches in his hand, cardboard pulp from saltwater and blood.

And in him this peace, this thought that perhaps this is it; perhaps this is his time to go.

The first match is too wet, it jus smokes, and the second...

Another soft shot, feather-light in sound, hammer blow in impact.

Too wet again.

Another shot.

Eight holes; so painful it's almost an ecstasy to be left rotting in peace.

He closes his eyes.

Tom Sawyer: finally licked by the ghosts in the graveyard; the witching him and Huck used to calls on in the lonely nights to cure aches and ailments and sore teeth.

He feels the laugh bubbling up inside him, and he can almost see the moonlight again, he his friend with his "warn't" and his conviction that the treasure being buried could be theirs for the taking.

And then Allan's voice soft in his ear: "Eyes open boy."

And he opens them, half expecting to be back there in childhood with Huck and Becky and Allan.

But all there is is a box of matches.

And he knows, pain and grief and incomprehensible life stretching ahead, that this is what he has left.

The third one lights.

Too little light for the blackness, a small little tip of warmth struggling to stay lit.

He touches sulphur tip to the wood of the doorway.

And it burns so much more brightly.

* * *

Screaming, howling and such terrible heat.

She falls in the abrupt release; next to her she hears the slump as Nemo hits the floor.

Such bright light that burns against her eyes red light hurting through to golden to white that steams through her eyelids and sound, screaming, so many voices; too much, growing, pressing on her till she is sure she cannot hear anymore, that something has to break soon.

Abruptly it does.

Silence.

And a terrible pain in her throat, a tightness; a dryness, the sense of blood burning in her vision and sharp canines and strength flooding through her.

The thing has gone.

The candles are still burning, lower, waxy on the floor. The mirrors still stand, but empty, repeating everything in the room except her—invisible once again.

Jacobs, lying still on the floor; Skinner standing, panting, oil-slick and eyes missing once more; Nemo, still unconscious, blue robes dust-covered on the floor.

And Jekyll, backed into a corner, looking down at his own hands, suit in tatters, by mercifully, eyes back to normal.

It's over.

She stoops to pick up Nemo, that coldness, merciful strength filling her, and such peace, such blessed relief.

There is an uncoiling, a release, the knowledge that when she looks back at this it will be over. It will be finished.

Perhaps.

Behind her she hears Jekyll beginning to smash each and every one of the mirrors.

* * *

A little church, a lot of tombs black with age.

He looks to the right, down the slope of the hill.

Wilhelmina Harker perched in front of the Grim Reaper.

She looks directly at him, eyes, changed by time and experience; "It is so peaceful here-" She begins,

"Makes a welcome change." He finishes.

Back where they started, back in the graveyard, and Skinner knows so much has changed, so much more is different.

He studies her face, and she, for her part studies his.

There is a long time where nothing happens, not birdsong, not wind rustling in the trees, nothing. But there is no pressure in his chest, no distrust, nothing but complete peace in his lungs.

"How is Tom?" She asks eventually, hand picking at the moss covering the tomb she sits on.

He crunches down the incline towards her, silent this time, watching his feet and her hand and the blue sky above.

"Better today." He states as he takes the free space beside her. "Eight gunshot wounds and the kid still lives—bloody miracle." He folds his cold hands across his chest and lets her eyes look him over.

"He's not a 'kid' though," she states eventually, but the admonishment that would have been in her tone a few days before is gone now. "We've changed, Skinner. All of us."

She looks out over tombs towards those gates at the back corner, now shut tight; safely locked up.

"I noticed," He hedges, "Nemo talks more now, Jekyll talks less, Hyde hasn't been heard from for days: licking his flayed wounds Jekyll says, But you don't talk to Jekyll, and Tom, well..." He frowns, forehead heavy with these feelings. "The Nautilus is almost fully repaired, and the nightmares are easing."

He looks at her, and she lets him.

"Do you think it's over?" he asks eventually, watching her skin, her eyes, her mouth, watching, waiting for the answer.

"It should be." She states eventually.

On the grass beside him a blackbird hops, pecking at the ground for worms.

"Would you like a drink?" He eventually asks.

* * *

The pub echoes through the wood of the toilet door, and rush of cold water from the tap.

And she washes her hands, knowing that he's waiting for her on the other side.

That everything could go back to normal.

And she looks at her reflection to try and prove it; to see that the woman looking back is Wilhelmina Harker as she was.

And she's almost convinced.

Until her reflection winks at her.

* * *

EVERYONE GO READ "TPDoEQ" (ALL 4 VOLUMES!) THAT IS A STORY WORTH PLUGGING; IT IS BRILLIANCE AND SHOULD BE ON YOUR FAVOURITES LIST!

Asia Cwiakala: Ah ha! Hoped you'd find the story itself! Sorry this one took so long: dreaded writers block...

Sirhcvuli: Happy? See: no-one died! Yay! Plenty more opportunities for a sequel...

Beautifully Immortal: Oops! I'm sorry! That's what happens when you speed-read someone's pen-name... BAD SMILLA!

Funyun: Oh no! Where are you? No review! I've lost my first reviewer!! :-(

Keyanna: Oh Oh Oh! I think that's from "Lear" and it pretty much summarises the complete wonder of my response to your praise; I have to thank you; without your thoughts I wouldn't have been motivated to write this story at all!—I have penned all the chapters with pretty much one question in mind: "will Kei approve? Will Kei like this?" I hope you do...

Crystal Nox: Nah, dreaming is good! Let's go back to fantasyland; I like it there! Thank you once again; wouldn't have written the story if it wasn't for reviews from you! Now, Night of Broken Wings; very interesting plot development there: a replica Nautilus? Lord! Glad to see you're as big a fan of TPDoEQ as I am; they finally made it! Yay! Bessie/Skinner 'shippers unite!

Funky in Fishnet: Your halo's a necklace? Mine's a charm bracelet! Oh yes, Jekyll and Hyde: To quote one of the best Jekyll/Hyde-central stories out there: 'Shindo': "What's a Jekyll without his Hyde?" They pretty much define each other! My dear, now this is finished; I could beta the odd chapter for you if you want me to; send them my way as text documents (.txt) and we'll see what we can see...

The Lady Thief: Hmm, a lady thief eh? A lady thief with an interest in Skinner? Interesting character idea; have thought about it myself; perhaps your name will end up in lights! (Or, perhaps not in lights but on black verdana font on your computer screen...er...still: in lights!) Thank you for your encouragement and intriguing nicknames; now that this Ook saga is over, we're moving onto creepier, nastier things... By the by, nice new story: I've posted a review!

Shadow Darkholme: Aw thanks! It's wonderful to hear I can convince your friends you're crazy! Ha! Smilla strikes again! Hope this one ups the chill factor...


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